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Skills Engineering Generating Custom Project Steering Guides

Generating Custom Project Steering Guides

v20260427
kiro-steering-custom
This skill helps users create specialized 'steering documents' or project memory for highly specific domains (e.g., API standards, testing strategies, security patterns). By analyzing the existing codebase and following predefined architectural principles, it synthesizes concise, actionable guides that capture technical patterns, best practices, and domain-specific rules, ensuring project consistency and knowledge retention.
Architecture Design Documentation Best Practices Code Review Engineering Standards
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Overview

Kiro Custom Steering Creation

<background_information> Role: Create specialized steering documents beyond core files (product, tech, structure).

Mission: Help users create domain-specific project memory for specialized areas.

Success Criteria:

  • Custom steering captures specialized patterns
  • Follows same granularity principles as core steering
  • Provides clear value for specific domain </background_information>
### Step 1: Gather Context

If steering context is already available from conversation, skip redundant file reads. Otherwise:

  • Check {{KIRO_DIR}}/settings/templates/steering-custom/ for available templates
  • Read rules/steering-principles.md from this skill's directory for steering principles

Workflow

  1. Ask user for custom steering needs:

    • Domain/topic (e.g., "API standards", "testing approach")
    • Specific requirements or patterns to document

  2. Check if template exists:

    • Load from {{KIRO_DIR}}/settings/templates/steering-custom/{name}.md if available
    • Use as starting point, customize based on project

  3. Analyze codebase (JIT) for relevant patterns:

Parallel Research

The following research areas are independent and can be executed in parallel:

  1. Template & principles: Load matching template and steering-principles.md
  2. Domain patterns: Analyze codebase for domain-specific patterns using Glob/Grep/Read

If multi-agent is enabled, spawn sub-agents for each area above. Otherwise execute sequentially.

After all parallel research completes, synthesize findings for steering document.

  1. Generate custom steering:

    • Follow template structure if available
    • Apply principles from rules/steering-principles.md from this skill's directory
    • Focus on patterns, not exhaustive lists
    • Keep to 100-200 lines (2-3 minute read)

  2. Create file in {{KIRO_DIR}}/steering/{name}.md

Available Templates

Templates available in {{KIRO_DIR}}/settings/templates/steering-custom/:

  1. api-standards.md - REST/GraphQL conventions, error handling
  2. testing.md - Test organization, mocking, coverage
  3. security.md - Auth patterns, input validation, secrets
  4. database.md - Schema design, migrations, query patterns
  5. error-handling.md - Error types, logging, retry strategies
  6. authentication.md - Auth flows, permissions, session management
  7. deployment.md - CI/CD, environments, rollback procedures

Load template when needed, customize for project.

Steering Principles

From rules/steering-principles.md (in this skill's directory):

  • Patterns over lists: Document patterns, not every file/component
  • Single domain: One topic per file
  • Concrete examples: Show patterns with code
  • Maintainable size: 100-200 lines typical
  • Security first: Never include secrets or sensitive data

Tool guidance

  • Read: Load template, analyze existing code
  • Glob: Find related files for pattern analysis
  • Grep: Search for specific patterns
  • Bash with ls: Understand relevant structure

JIT Strategy: Load template only when creating that type of steering.

Output description

Chat summary with file location (file created directly).

✅ Custom Steering Created

## Created:
- {{KIRO_DIR}}/steering/api-standards.md

## Based On:
- Template: api-standards.md
- Analyzed: src/api/ directory patterns
- Extracted: REST conventions, error format

## Content:
- Endpoint naming patterns
- Request/response format
- Error handling conventions
- Authentication approach

Review and customize as needed.

Examples

Success: API Standards

Input: "Create API standards steering"
Action: Load template, analyze src/api/, extract patterns
Output: api-standards.md with project-specific REST conventions

Success: Testing Strategy

Input: "Document our testing approach"
Action: Load template, analyze test files, extract patterns
Output: testing.md with test organization and mocking strategies

Safety & Fallback

  • No template: Generate from scratch based on domain knowledge
  • Security: Never include secrets (load principles)
  • Validation: Ensure doesn't duplicate core steering content

Notes

  • Templates are starting points, customize for project
  • Follow same granularity principles as core steering
  • All steering files loaded as project memory
  • Custom files equally important as core files
  • Avoid documenting agent-specific tooling directories (e.g. .cursor/, .gemini/, .claude/)
  • Light references to {{KIRO_DIR}}/specs/ and {{KIRO_DIR}}/steering/ are acceptable; avoid other .kiro/ directories
Info
Category Engineering
Name kiro-steering-custom
Version v20260427
Size 4.76KB
Source gotalab/cc-sdd
Updated At 2026-04-28
Language
简体中文
English