Chemical Manufacturing Skills for Claude

By Scott Duncan. Reach me on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/s-r-duncan/

A collection of Claude Skills that encode chemical manufacturing engineering practices so that Claude produces work a practicing engineer would actually accept, rather than something that merely looks plausible.

Ask a general-purpose model for a PFD and you get a steam coil above the liquid level, an open control loop, a tag hidden under a valve body. A skill brings the standards and the review checklist into the session so those defects get caught first.

Claude’s output using the pfd-generator skill. A PFD of a depropanizer unit which includes process flows and control logic. Delivered as an editable SVG.

Skills

Additional skills will be added over time.

Install

Pick whichever matches how you use Claude. The first one needs no terminal, no git, and no coding.

In claude.ai — point and click

1. Download pfd-generator.zip. Leave it zipped — that’s the format Claude wants.
2. Turn the feature on. In claude.ai, open Settings → Capabilities and switch on Skills and Code execution and file creation.
3. Upload it. Go to Customize → Skills, click + → Create skill, choose the zip, and toggle the skill on.

The same zip works in the Claude desktop app. You only do this once.

In Claude Code — as a plugin

Two commands, and git pull on your side keeps it current:

/plugin marketplace add ScottDuncanAI/claude-manufacturing-skills
/plugin install pfd-generator@chem-mfg-skills

Use /plugin install chem-mfg-skills-all@chem-mfg-skills to get every skill in the collection, including ones added later.

In Claude Code — by copying the folder

For yourself, or for a project so everyone in that repo gets it:

cp -r skills/pfd-generator ~/.claude/skills/            # just you
cp -r skills/pfd-generator /.claude/skills/   # the whole repo

Restart Claude Code after copying. Some skills carry Python dependencies — check for a scripts/requirements.txt inside the skill folder.

Drawing your first PFD

Simply open Claude and describe the process you’d like depicted in a PFD. The skill will load automatically, there’s no need to say "use the PFD generator skill to…). Example:

Draw me a PFD for a jacketed batch reactor. Steam to the jacket on temperature control, cascaded from the batch temperature to the jacket outlet. Level indication on the reactor, agitator, and a bottoms transfer pump.

Claude will ask a question or two about anything that changes the drawing, then hand back an SVG. Open it in a browser, or drop it into PowerPoint, Visio, or Illustrator — every tag and note is real text, so you can edit labels yourself. It also returns the script that drew it, so “move the steam header down and re-issue” is a small change rather than a redraw.

Then read it like a reviewer. It is a conceptual drawing, and it is your name on anything you pass along.

What is a skill?

A skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file with a short YAML header and a set of instructions. Claude reads only the header by default; when the description matches what you’re doing, it loads the full instructions and any supporting reference files, scripts, or templates in that folder.

Practically: you don’t invoke a skill. You describe your problem, and the right expertise loads itself.

Repo layout

.
├── .claude-plugin/
│   └── marketplace.json          plugin catalog — one entry per skill
├── skills/
│   └── pfd-generator/
│       ├── SKILL.md              instructions Claude loads
│       ├── references/           detail loaded on demand, not up front
│       ├── scripts/              deterministic code the skill calls
│       └── examples/             sample output
└── templates/
    └── skill-template/           scaffold for a new skill

One folder per skill. templates/ deliberately sits outside skills/ so the scaffold never loads as a real skill.

Adding a skill

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Short version: copy templates/skill-template/, write the description carefully, add a marketplace.json entry and a row in the table above.

License

MIT. The license covers the skill text and code — it does not transfer engineering judgment, and it does not make the output of these skills correct. Review before use.