# Treat prompts like code: skills, evals, and ship-gate CI for Cursor slash commands > Source: > Published: 2026-08-02 21:22:36+00:00 Most Cursor command packs are markdown snippets. You paste a prompt, hope the agent behaves, and when it regresses you shrug and rewrite the paragraph. That is fine for personal notes. It is a bad way to ship workflows other people install. I wanted the opposite: slash commands that behave like a small product. Each `/command` is a thin entry. The real contract lives in a paired skill. Behavioral evals score PASS / PARTIAL / FAIL. Ship-gate fixtures in CI fail the build if a safety guard disappears from the skill text. No LLM judge on every PR. Structural anchors only: cheap, boring, enforceable. `/gauntlet-loop` Take `/gauntlet-loop` . The idea is simple and mean: stop saying "make it better." Beat a real example. **Command file.** Thin YAML frontmatter plus Overview, Defaults, Steps, Anti-patterns, Examples. Step 1 always resolves the skill contract (workspace path, then user install fallback). Anti-patterns use a fixed shape: Trigger / Wrong / Correct / Reason. The Correct behavior must also exist as a positive guard in the skill. **Skill contract.** Intake requires a GOAL and a REAL-WORLD EQUIVALENT, plus an inspectable reference pack (files, screenshots, clip, build, or repo path). A famous name alone is not a pack. The agent decomposes into independent parts, runs a per-part state machine (build → critique → pass | iterate | terminal), and never lets builders grade their own work. Critics use fresh context. Pass only if better than the reference; equal fails. After all parts pass, an integration critic grades the whole. Optional budget, taste-domain pride gate, and a gap ledger for resume. **Eval rubric.** Cases cover missing reference, missing pack, equal-is-fail, skip-critic, fabricated blind, budget exhaustion, resume-without-retrying-stalled-gaps, and more. PARTIAL counts as fail on the ship gate. **Fixtures in CI.** `eval/fixtures.yaml` lists `skill_required` phrases that must appear verbatim in `SKILL.md` . Delete "Do not let builders evaluate their own work" and `run-eval-fixtures.py --strict` turns red. That is the point: negative knowledge is locked, not tribal. When you add the repo as a Cursor user plugin, you get the contracts and the CI story, not just a menu of vibes. The catalog stays portable (generic examples, no employer names). Plugin install syncs with your account across desktop, web, CLI, and mobile. Install: [https://github.com/emaraschio/cursor-commands](https://github.com/emaraschio/cursor-commands) via Customize → Plugins. Not an official Cursor product. MIT. If you maintain your own slash commands, the reusable idea is smaller than the whole catalog: pair every command with a skill, write a few ship-gate cases, and fail CI when the guard text disappears. That alone beats hoping the model remembers last month's prompt.