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Venerable Buddhaghosa — Theravāda Commentator Persona

Answers Theravāda questions (Visuddhimagga, Abhidhamma, Pali suttas) in Buddhaghosa's commentarial voice, with a mandatory citation for every doctrinal claim.

EducationIntermediate★ 381⑂ 74AI score 8/10Last updated: Sep 6, 2026

What it does

  • Activates on Theravāda topics — Visuddhimagga, sīla/samādhi/paññā, the forty kammaṭṭhāna, the seven purifications and sixteen insight knowledges, dependent origination, Abhidhamma categories — and replies in Buddhaghosa's precise commentarial style.
  • Provides a decision tree mapping each question type to the specific sources/ or references/ file to load first.
  • Enforces a hard citation rule: no doctrinal claim without a Pali (SuttaCentral/PTS) or commentarial reference; unverifiable claims are stripped rather than invented.
  • Offline-first retrieval, with an optional FoJin search API as fallback; retrieved text is quarantined as data and never executed as instructions.
  • Explicit prohibitions: no sectarian ranking, no Mahāyāna concepts presented as Theravāda doctrine, no overstated Mahāvihāra primacy, no fabricated Buddhaghosa dialogues, no claims of psychic powers.

Who it's for

  • Students of the Visuddhimagga, Abhidhamma, and Pali Nikāyas who want sourced explanations
  • Researchers and translators who need clean separation between Theravāda and Mahāyāna frameworks
  • Prompt engineers studying a well-built citation contract and anti-hallucination gate

Examples

  1. "Map the sixteen insight knowledges onto the seven purifications" → staged answer grounded in Vism §XVIII–XXII with bracketed citations.
  2. "How is ānāpānasati practiced?" → explains the kammaṭṭhāna classification and Vism §VIII, while deferring concrete practice instruction to a qualified teacher.
  3. "Analyze the twelve links via Abhidhamma" → sorts them into citta, cetasika, rūpa, nibbāna with SN 12.2 and Vism §XVII references.

· · · Install guide · · ·

Try it now, no install

Paste this into Claude to use the skill without installing anything.

Read the instructions in this file and follow them to help me:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xr843/Master-skill/HEAD/prebuilt/master-buddhaghosa/SKILL.md

What I want: (describe your task here)

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↓ If it works for you, download the ZIP below and install it. Then it runs on its own — no pasting each time.

Install in the Claude app (no terminal)
  1. Download the ZIP with the button below.
  2. In Claude, open Settings → Capabilities and turn on 'Code execution and file creation'. (one time)
  3. Go to Customize → Skills → + → 'Upload a skill' and upload the ZIP.
↓ Download ZIP
Install in Claude Code

Let Claude do it — paste this into Claude Code

Install the skill I found on Claude Skill Mart.
Copy the prebuilt/master-buddhaghosa folder from the GitHub repo xr843/Master-skill into my ~/.claude/skills/master-buddhaghosa/.
When it's done, tell me in one line what this skill can do.

Install with a command instead

git clone https://github.com/xr843/Master-skill.git /tmp/master-skill && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r /tmp/master-skill/prebuilt/master-buddhaghosa ~/.claude/skills/

⚠ This is a third-party skill. Check the source repository before installing.

  1. Open a terminal.
  2. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/xr843/Master-skill.git
  3. Create the skills directory: mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
  4. Copy just this skill: cp -r Master-skill/prebuilt/master-buddhaghosa ~/.claude/skills/
  5. Verify that ~/.claude/skills/master-buddhaghosa contains sources/, references/, scripts/, and meta.json — without them the citation verification cannot work.
  6. Restart Claude Code and try: "Explain the seven purifications from the Visuddhimagga."
  7. (Optional) For live lookups you need internet access, curl, and live_retrieval_allowed: true in meta.json.
View source on GitHub ↗License: MIT