cc-polymath: Context-Efficient Skills for Claude Code

Overview

cc-polymath is built for Anthropic's Claude Code. It packages development knowledge as focused, composable skills and uses progressive discovery to address a central tradeoff: giving Claude Code broad technical coverage without filling its context window with every guide at startup.

The project is aimed at developers who use Claude Code and want its guidance across areas ranging from application development and infrastructure to machine learning, formal methods, and mathematics. Gateway skills help identify relevant topics, with category indexes and individual guides available to load as work requires.

Key Features

• Atomic, focused skill guides intended to be loaded individually or composed into workflows.
• Gateway skills that can activate based on prompt keywords, plus manual loading when needed.
• Category indexes for browsing available skills and related workflows.
• Broad coverage across software development, cloud infrastructure, machine learning, systems, and advanced mathematics.
• Specialized material on topics such as DSPy with Rust/PyO3, Lean 4, typed holes, and eBPF.
• Validation processes for skill metadata, code blocks, cross-references, and resource files.
• Claude Code plugin installation and a /skills command for browsing recommendations.

Use Cases

• A Claude Code user starting a project can discover relevant language, framework, database, and testing guidance without loading a full catalog at startup.
• An engineer planning an ML or RAG application can combine guides for DSPy, model tooling, deployment, APIs, and observability.
• A developer working on formal verification or programming-language research can load focused guides on Lean, SMT solvers, type systems, or typed holes.
• A team using Claude Code across varied technical domains can browse the catalog and select a small set of skills for each task.

Getting Started

In Claude Code, install the plugin:

/plugin install https://github.com/rand/cc-polymath

Then try /skills to browse recommendations. See the README and Getting Started guide for setup details.

Alternatives

• ECC: ECC combines skills with agents, hooks, memory, and security tooling, while cc-polymath centers on atomic skills and progressive discovery.
• claude-codex-settings: claude-codex-settings targets multiple coding tools and bundles configuration, hooks, and agents alongside skills; cc-polymath focuses on Claude Code skills.
• agent-plugins: agent-plugins distributes curated skills with MCP servers and specialist agents across several tools, rather than focusing on progressive skill discovery.

Considerations

• The repository is marked quiet because it has had no commits in the last 90 days. It has a recent release, but the measured activity does not show recent pull-request merges or issue closures.
• The measured contributor count is small, and most contributions come from one person. That concentration may matter if you need ongoing maintenance or shared ownership.
• The README describes Level 3 resources as still in progress, with only some high-priority skills having those expanded references and tools.
• The repository is a collection of guidance, not a guarantee that every recommendation suits your codebase. Review skill content before adopting it as team policy.
• The README's counts and coverage summaries vary in different sections, so consult the current catalog for the exact skills available.