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Claude with Skills

Exercise 03: Multi-argument Symbol Rename

Create a skill that takes three named arguments and renames a symbol across a specified scope. This exercise focuses on the arguments field, named argument references in the body, and safe find-and-replace logic.

Goal

The skill takes three arguments:

  1. old-name — the current name of the symbol
  2. new-name — the name to replace it with
  3. scope — where to search: file, module, or project

Example invocations:

/rename-symbol MyClass MyService file
/rename-symbol getUserById fetchUserById module
/rename-symbol legacyConfig appConfig project

What to write

The skill must:

  1. Declare named arguments in frontmatter: arguments: [old-name, new-name, scope]
  2. Use $old-name, $new-name, and $scope in the body (not $0, $1, $2)
  3. Set disable-model-invocation: true — renaming is a side-effect action
  4. Set argument-hint: [old-name] [new-name] [file|module|project]
  5. Include allowed-tools for the tools it needs (grep, sed, git diff, etc.)

Scope definitions

file: Rename only within the current file or the file explicitly mentioned in the task.

module: Rename within the directory containing the current file and its immediate subdirectories.

project: Rename across the entire project, excluding node_modules/, .git/, dist/, and build/.

Safety requirements

The skill must NOT rename substrings. MyClass must not rename MyClassExtended or loadMyClass. Use word boundary patterns in your grep and sed commands.

The skill must show the user a preview before making any changes, and ask for confirmation.

Validation

Write the skill and test it on a small project:

  1. Create a file with a symbol used in three places.
  2. Invoke the skill with file scope.
  3. Confirm it previews the changes correctly.
  4. Confirm it does not rename partial matches.
  5. Confirm git diff shows only the expected changes after confirmation.

Solution

A worked solution is in solutions/03-rename-symbol/SKILL.md.