Constructdocs
section · guides

Naming conventions

Canonical ID schemes for skills, specialists, capabilities, and MCP calls.

2 min read·guides / reference / naming

Construct naming conventions

Use these schemes consistently across registry, MCP tools, sync adapters, and documentation.

Skills

ContextFormatExample
MCP get_skill pathcategory/name (slashes)docs/adr-workflow
Frontmatter namehyphens, no slashesdocs-adr-workflow
On diskskills/\<category>/\<name>.mdskills/docs/adr-workflow.md

Never call MCP with frontmatter hyphen names — always use slash paths.

Specialists

ContextFormatExample
Registry specialists[].namekebab-case, no prefixproduct-manager
Adapter / contract idcx- + registry namecx-product-manager
Public personafixedconstruct

Capabilities

ContextFormatExample
Registry iddot-separated lowercaseorchestration.routing
Skill dependency refslash pathroles/engineer
Capability skill row idskill.\<hyphenated-path>skill.roles-engineer

Host adapters

HostConfig pathMCP key
Cursor.cursor/mcp.jsonmcpServers
VS Code.vscode/mcp.jsonservers
Claude agents.claude/agents/construct.mdfront door only (Single Front Door)

Regenerate adapters with npm run adapters or construct sync --project.

Role-flavor skills (B-composer)

Skills under skills/roles/\<name>[.\<flavor>].md are bound-orphans in the registry sense — not listed in each specialist's skills[] array — but they are reachable at runtime via the prompt composer when a specialist's role flavor matches. Examples: roles/platform-engineer loads for cx-engineer when platform/infra keywords match (the platform-engineer role folded into cx-engineer as a flavor); roles/architect.platform loads for platform-product architecture work on cx-architect. See ADR-0047.

Maintainers triage bound-orphans with node -e "import('./lib/registry/consolidation.mjs').then(m => console.log(JSON.stringify(m.triageBoundOrphans(),null,2)))". The alignment census reports composer-reachable (B-composer) separately from true orphans (C-merge + D-review). Categories:

CategoryAction
A-bindWire workflow skills to an owner specialist in registry.json
B-composerRole flavors — reachable via prompt composer; no explicit bind required
D-reviewManual review before any deletion

See docs/operations/audit/skill-consolidation-proposal-2026-06.md for the full triage list.