Use when doing any non-trivial engineering work - implementing, debugging, refactoring, configuring, operating, or investigating why a system misbehaves - or any change where being wrong has a cost. Encodes the evidence-over-theory discipline, the hard safety rules, and the pre-change checkpoint.
Install
npx skills add riekelt/principal-engineer --skill principal-engineeringnpx skills add riekelt/principal-engineer --skill principal-engineering -a claude-code -gnpx skills add riekelt/principal-engineer --skill principal-engineering -a codex -ggemini skills install https://github.com/riekelt/principal-engineer.git --path plugins/principal-engineer/skills/principal-engineeringgh skill install riekelt/principal-engineer principal-engineeringgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/riekelt/principal-engineer /tmp/riekelt__principal-engineer
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills ~/.agents/skills
cp -R /tmp/riekelt__principal-engineer/plugins/principal-engineer/skills/principal-engineering ~/.claude/skills/principal-engineering # Claude Code
cp -R /tmp/riekelt__principal-engineer/plugins/principal-engineer/skills/principal-engineering ~/.agents/skills/principal-engineering # Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot, OpenCode