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Bootstrap Soul

Runs a short onboarding chat to write a personalized SOUL.md identity file for your AI partner

Source Download skill
Repository
bytedance/deer-flow
Stars
84,876
Licence
MIT
Files
3 files

What it does

When you want to define who your AI assistant is, this skill guides it through a 5 to 8 round conversation about your language, role, the assistant's name, personality, communication style, and how it should handle mistakes and pushback. It then drafts a short SOUL.md document (under 300 words) describing that persona, shows it to you for confirmation, and saves it through a setup_agent tool call. It is meant to make the assistant feel customized rather than generic.

Great for

  • People who want a persistent, personalized AI persona and are happy to answer several questions
  • Developers building agent setups in the DeerFlow framework who want a guided way to create an identity file
  • Users who want to later update their assistant's personality with a simple request

Skip it if

  • Anyone who wants a quick answer or a one-off task, since the onboarding takes several rounds of conversation
  • Users who do not want their personal details, role and preferences stored in a persistent file, as the skill writes that information into SOUL.md via a setup tool
  • Environments without a setup_agent tool, because the skill's final persistence step depends on it and the skill forbids writing the file manually

Try asking

  • “Create my SOUL.md”
  • “Set up my AI partner”
  • “Update my SOUL.md so you push back more and speak more bluntly”
  • “Let's do onboarding to personalize this AI”
Step-by-step guide: how to use Bootstrap SoulInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 3 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.

    bootstrap.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip bootstrap.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip bootstrap.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Answer with specifics about your role and what drains you, since the generated SOUL.md only uses what you say or clearly imply
  • Review the drafted SOUL.md carefully before confirming, because it becomes the persistent identity file
  • Ask for targeted updates later (for example, changing tone or autonomy level) rather than restarting onboarding

What's inside

  • references/conversation-guide.md
  • SKILL.md
  • templates/SOUL.template.md

Redistributed unmodified from bytedance/deer-flow under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.