Using AI Agents

PhysicsNeMo Curator ships with Claude skills — structured instructions that guide an AI coding agent through implementing new components. If you use Claude Code (or a compatible agent), these skills automate much of the boilerplate and ensure new code follows project conventions from the start.

Available Skills

Three component-authoring skills live in .claude/skills/:

Skill	Trigger	What it does
add-source	“Add a new data source”	Generates source class with params, tests, registry
add-filter	“Add a new filter”	Generates filter with correct generator patterns and tests
add-sink	“Add a new sink”	Generates sink with naming strategy, append logic, and tests

How to Use Them

1. Open the repository in Claude Code (or any agent that supports Claude skills).

2. Describe what you want to build — for example:

   “Add a new source that reads Parquet files from S3 and yields Mesh objects.”

3. The agent detects the matching skill and follows its guided workflow:

   • Asks discovery questions (file format, domain, naming, etc.)

   • Generates the implementation with correct patterns

   • Creates tests, registers the component, and runs quality checks

What the Skills Automate

Each skill encodes the project’s conventions so you don’t have to remember them all:

• SPDX license headers

• from __future__ import annotations and TYPE_CHECKING import patterns

• ClassVar declarations for name and description

• params() classmethod with proper Param objects

• NumPy-style docstrings (99 % coverage requirement)

• Generator semantics (sources and filters)

• Test scaffolding with pytest.mark.requires

• Registry registration in __init__.py

• Conventional Commit messages

Without an Agent

The skills are plain Markdown files — you can read them directly for reference even if you’re not using an AI agent:

cat .claude/skills/add-source/SKILL.md
cat .claude/skills/add-filter/SKILL.md
cat .claude/skills/add-sink/SKILL.md

They serve as detailed checklists for implementing components by hand.