spring-boot-skills

Drop a skill into your project. Your AI coding agent instantly understands your Spring Boot codebase — architecture, patterns, conventions — and codes like a senior engineer who's been on your team for years.

Quick Start · Skills Catalog · Before / After · Skill Anatomy · Contributing

Why this exists

AI coding agents are great at Python. They hallucinate in Spring Boot.

They generate @Autowired field injection instead of constructor injection. They use ResponseEntity<?> where you have a standard response wrapper. They ignore your existing exception hierarchy and invent a new one. They don't know your project uses Flyway, so they generate schema SQL by hand. They emit pre-GA Spring AI artifact names that no longer exist in Maven Central.

Skills fix this. A skill is a markdown file your agent reads before touching your code. It tells the agent your conventions, your stack, your gotchas — not generic Spring Boot from 2020.

flowchart LR
    A["💬 You ask:<br/>&quot;add an orders endpoint&quot;"] --> B{Claude matches<br/>skill triggers}
    B -->|"REST code?"| C["📜 rest-api-conventions"]
    B -->|"persistence?"| D["📜 spring-data-jpa"]
    C --> E["🤖 Agent codes with<br/>YOUR envelope, YOUR<br/>status mapping, YOUR<br/>pagination contract"]
    D --> E
    E --> F["✅ Code that looks like<br/>your team wrote it"]

    style A fill:#0f172a,stroke:#38bdf8,color:#e2e8f0
    style B fill:#1e293b,stroke:#94a3b8,color:#e2e8f0
    style C fill:#10241a,stroke:#6DB33F,color:#a7f3d0
    style D fill:#10241a,stroke:#6DB33F,color:#a7f3d0
    style E fill:#0f172a,stroke:#d97757,color:#e2e8f0
    style F fill:#10241a,stroke:#6DB33F,color:#a7f3d0

This repo is a collection of battle-tested skills. Copy, adapt, drop in.

🧠 Concepts

📦 Skills

Drop any skill folder into .claude/skills/ in your project. Claude Code auto-discovers them.

🏗️ Architecture

🔌 API Design

🗄️ Data & Persistence

🔒 Security

🤖 AI & MCP

🧪 Testing

⚡ Quick Start

1. Install Claude Code (if not already)

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

2. Drop a skill into your project

mkdir -p .claude/skills
cp -r spring-boot-skills/skills/rest-api-conventions .claude/skills/
cp -r spring-boot-skills/skills/spring-data-jpa .claude/skills/

3. Tell Claude what you want

claude
> Generate a CRUD endpoint for the Order entity following our REST conventions

That's it. Claude reads the skill before writing a single line.

⚔️ Before / After

The value of these skills is not generic Spring Boot advice. The value is preventing the small mistakes AI agents make when they do not know your backend conventions.

@RestController
public class OrderController {
    @Autowired
    private OrderRepository repository;

    @PostMapping("/orders")
    public ResponseEntity<?> create(
            @RequestBody Order order) {
        return ResponseEntity.ok(
            repository.save(order));
    }
}

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api/v1/orders")
@RequiredArgsConstructor
class OrderController {
    private final OrderService orderService;

    @PostMapping
    ResponseEntity<ApiResponse<OrderResponse>> create(
            @Valid @RequestBody CreateOrderRequest request) {
        OrderResponse response = orderService.create(request);
        return ResponseEntity.status(HttpStatus.CREATED)
            .body(ApiResponse.ok(response));
    }
}

📐 Skill Anatomy

Every skill in this repo follows the same structure:

skills/rest-api-conventions/
├── SKILL.md          ← the skill: trigger description + conventions + gotchas
├── examples/         ← good and bad examples, side by side
│   ├── good-controller.java
│   └── bad-controller.java
└── templates/        ← copy-paste starting points
    ├── ApiResponse.java
    └── GlobalExceptionHandler.java

SKILL.md has two critical parts:

---
name: rest-api-conventions
description: >
  Use when generating REST controllers, response objects, DTOs, or error handlers.
  Defines the project's response envelope, HTTP status mapping, and error code conventions.
---

## Conventions
...

The description is a trigger — write it as "use when [condition]", not as a summary. This is what makes the agent actually load the skill.

The Gotchas section at the bottom of each skill is the secret weapon: a running list of the exact mistakes agents make in that domain, phrased as Agent does X — do Y instead.

💡 Tips from the trenches

The Gotchas section is the most valuable part — add to it every time the agent does something wrong. Your future self will thank you.

Don't describe what Spring Boot already knows. Skills should push Claude out of its default behavior, not repeat the docs.

Be opinionated about your project. Generic Spring Boot best practices belong in a blog post. Skills belong in your .claude/ folder.

Fork this repo and customize. Every team's conventions are different. These are starting points, not gospel.

Combine with CLAUDE.md. CLAUDE.md is for project-level memory (build commands, test runner, key architecture decisions). Skills are for domain-specific coding patterns.

🔥 Hot: MCP Server Skill

The mcp-server skill is the most powerful one here.

It teaches your agent to build production-ready MCP servers on MCP Java SDK 1.0 and the Spring AI GA starters — the same protocol used by Claude, Cursor, VS Code, and every major AI coding tool.

// What the agent generates with the skill loaded —
// real GA API: spring-ai-starter-mcp-server + annotation scanning
@Component
public class OrderMcpTools {

    private final OrderService orderService;

    @McpTool(name = "get_order",
             description = "Get a single order by ID including all line items and status history")
    public OrderResponse getOrder(
            @McpToolParam(description = "UUID of the order", required = true) String orderId) {
        return OrderResponse.from(orderService.findById(UUID.fromString(orderId)));
    }
}

Without the skill, the agent guesses: dead pre-GA artifact names, SDK 0.9.0 APIs, System.out logging that corrupts the stdio transport — or it gives up and writes Python.

🗺️ Roadmap

• Skills for Spring Batch
• Skills for Spring Cloud Gateway
• Skills for Spring WebFlux / reactive patterns
• Skills for multi-tenancy
• CLAUDE.md template for Spring Boot projects
• /generate-endpoint command
• /write-test command
• /db-migrate command
• Integration with Hatch background job library
• Integration with SpringPulse observability

🤝 Contributing

Skills get better with real-world use. If you find a gap — the agent did something stupid in your Spring Boot project — open a PR and add it to the Gotchas section of the relevant skill.

1. Fork the repo
2. Copy an existing skill as a template
3. Fill in conventions, examples, gotchas
4. PR with a one-line description of what problem it solves

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