About describe
describe is an Emacs skill that queries and summarizes documentation for functions, variables, faces, key bindings, and apropos matches through emacsclient. It is for people looking up Emacs help from their editor environment.
Key features
- 01Query documentation through emacsclient
- 02Search functions, variables, and faces
- 03Look up key bindings
- 04Run apropos searches
- 05Combine results from multiple lookups
Use cases
- 01Find documentation for an Emacs function
- 02Check the purpose of a variable or face
- 03Look up a command's key binding
- 04Explore related documentation by keyword
Install
Copy the command and run it in a terminal.
npx skills add https:/After installing, type/describein Claude Code to confirm it loaded.
Bundled filesagent-skill-describe.el
Details
From the project READMELook up Emacs documentation
Look up Emacs documentation using emacsclient --eval and summarize the findings. The query is searched across multiple mechanisms (function, variable, face, key binding, and apropos) in one call, returning all findings as a single string.
First, locate agent-skill-describe.el which lives alongside this skill file at skills/describe/agent-skill-describe.el in the emacs-skills plugin directory.
emacsclient --eval '
(progn
(load "/path/to/skills/describe/agent-skill-describe.el" nil t)
(agent-skill-describe :query "dired-mark"))'
Rules
- Summarize the returned documentation for the user in the conversation.
- Locate
agent-skill-describe.elrelative to this skill file's directory. - Run the
emacsclient --evalcommand via the Bash tool.