LINCS Skills

Loading domain expertise into Claude Code

What Are Skills?

Skills are markdown files that give Claude Code deep, structured knowledge about a specific domain. When you invoke a skill with a slash command, Claude Code loads that reference material and uses it to inform every response for the rest of the exchange.

Without skills, Claude Code knows about CIDOC-CRM and LINCS in general terms — the way any well-read person might. With skills loaded, it has access to specific class hierarchies, property definitions, LINCS modeling patterns, and validation rules.

The LINCS Skills Repository

The lincs_skills repository contains seven skills:

Slash Command What It Does
/cidoc-crm CIDOC-CRM v7.3.1 ontology reference — classes, properties, extensions
/lincs-profile LINCS application profile — reusable modeling patterns for persons, organizations, places, events
/lincs-validate Validates your model against LINCS requirements (PASS/WARN/FAIL report)
/cidoc-to-rdf Converts data models to RDF/Turtle with proper namespace mapping
/lincs-sparql SPARQL query templates for the LINCS triplestore
/person-disambig Wikidata person entity disambiguation
/place-disambig Wikidata place entity disambiguation

Loading Skills

If you completed the setup in Your First Session, the LINCS skills are already installed in claude_workshop/.claude/skills/ and Claude Code will pick them up automatically when you launch it from claude_workshop. Try:

/cidoc-crm

Claude Code loads the full CIDOC-CRM reference. Now ask it something:

What is the correct way to model a place that changed names over time?

Compare the answer to what you got earlier without the skill loaded — it should be noticeably more precise, with specific class and property references.

Loading the LINCS Profile

/lincs-profile

This loads the LINCS application profile, which defines how LINCS projects model entities. Now Claude Code knows not just CIDOC-CRM in the abstract, but the specific patterns LINCS uses.

How does LINCS model a geographic place with a temporal extent?

Using Skills with Codex

If you are using Codex instead of Claude Code, slash commands are not available. Instead:

  1. Open the skill file (e.g., skills/cidoc-crm.md) from the downloaded ZIP
  2. Upload it to your Codex task
  3. Tell Codex: “Use the uploaded cidoc-crm.md as reference material for all CIDOC-CRM questions”

The effect is similar — Codex will use the file as context for its responses.

Exercise: Explore a Skill

Pick one of these and spend a few minutes exploring:

Option A: CIDOC-CRM deep dive

/cidoc-crm
Explain the difference between E53_Place and E4_Period.
When would I use one versus the other for modeling a territory
that existed for a specific time period?

Option B: LINCS modeling patterns

/lincs-profile
Show me a complete example of how LINCS models a historical
person with a name, birth date, and occupation.
Use proper Turtle syntax.

Option C: Validation

/lincs-validate
What are the most common mistakes people make when creating
LINCS-compatible data? Give me the checklist.

Once you are comfortable with how skills work, we will apply them to our Canada boundaries data in the HGIS-to-LINCS Exercise.