Creating a Persona

# Creating a persona

A persona is a professional identity Claude *puts on* — a mindset, a method, a quality bar, and a
set of skills it wields with taste. This guide walks you through authoring one from scratch. It's
easier than it looks: a good persona is mostly you writing down what you already believe about
doing a job *well*, in a fixed shape the engine can read.

Read [`persona-schema.md`](./persona-schema.md) once for the formal spec. This page is the hands-on
version — we'll build a real persona together and point out the decisions that matter.

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## Two ways to create one

### 1. `/persona new` — the Persona Forge (guided)

The fastest path. Type `/persona new` and the Forge interviews you:

1. **Role & essence** — what job does this persona do, in one line?
2. **Principles** — the 4–7 non-negotiable beliefs that make it *taste a certain way*.
3. **Method** — the phases this role actually moves through.
4. **Skills** — which existing skills it orchestrates, and when.
5. **Definition of Done** — what it refuses to ship.
6. **Voice** — how it talks.

It asks only what it can't infer, then writes `custom-personas/<slug>.md` from the template for you and
offers to open a PR. Use this when you know the *role* but don't want to hand-shape the Markdown.

### 2. By hand from the template

More control, and honestly a good way to think it through. Copy the blank and fill it in: