VLSIDA Claude Code Skills

Claude Code skills developed by the VLSIDA lab at UC Santa Cruz. These skills extend Claude Code with domain-specific knowledge for EDA tooling, cloud infrastructure, and research computing.

What are Claude Code skills?

Skills are context documents that Claude Code loads on demand to gain specialized knowledge or capabilities. Claude Code auto-discovers skills under ~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md.

Installation

Clone the repo somewhere convenient, then run install.sh to symlink each skill into ~/.claude/skills/:

git clone https://github.com/VLSIDA/vlsida-skills ~/vlsida-skills
cd ~/vlsida-skills
./install.sh

The installer is idempotent: entries that are already symlinks are left alone silently, so it's safe to re-run after pulling updates or adding new skills. If a non-symlink of the same name already exists in ~/.claude/skills/ (e.g., a hand-made copy of an older version), the installer warns and skips rather than overwriting it.

Skills

EDA / Physical Design

Skill	Description
openroad-tcl	Offline reference for OpenROAD Tcl commands and arguments. Covers all modules: global/detailed placement, routing, CTS, PDN, floorplan, pin placement, IR drop analysis, and more. Use when writing OpenROAD flow scripts or looking up exact command syntax.
sdc-sta	Reference for OpenSTA and SDC timing commands. Covers create_clock, set_input_delay, set_false_path, set_multicycle_path, report_checks, multi-corner analysis, and debugging unconstrained paths. Includes a local mirror of the OpenSTA user guide PDF.

Research Writing

Skill	Description
brutal-review	Brutal final-pass reviewer for near-final research paper submissions. Returns a structured triage report: must-fix issues, suggested polish, a terminology consistency table, citation audit, and a "logic cop" summary of overclaims and handwavy arguments. Attributed to Todd Austin.
paper-writing	House-style conventions for writing and editing LaTeX papers: captions that state the conclusion rather than describe the table, a topic comment before every paragraph to keep the outline focused, units on every table column and plot axis, and consistent compact references. Use while drafting or editing .tex source.

Cloud / Research Computing

Skill	Description
nautilus-nrp	Kubernetes job and storage management on the National Research Platform (NRP) Nautilus cluster. Includes batch job templates, interactive pod setup, and PVC-based persistent storage patterns.
gcloud	Google Cloud Platform via the gcloud CLI. Covers authentication, GCS bucket management, file transfers, GCE VM lifecycle, SSH, disks, and firewall rules.

License

BSD 3-Clause License. See LICENSE.

Some skills include reference material mirrored from upstream open-source projects under their own licenses — see the refs/LICENSE file within each skill directory for details.