An open orchestrator for the Claude Skills catalog. Built by RampStack.
Tholo is an open orchestrator for the Claude Skills catalog, built by RampStack. It reads the claude-skills catalog, plans a build task, and selects only the skills the task needs, then prepares the work to hand to Claude Code. It turns a large skill library from a pile of files into a working build system, and it removes the two problems a big catalog creates: skills clashing with each other, and context bloat from loading more than the task needs.
This repository documents what Tholo does and shows worked examples. The orchestrator is operated by RampStack.
A skill catalog that grows past a few dozen entries develops two failures. Skills start to clash, more than one looks applicable and they pull the work in different directions. And loading the whole catalog to do one task floods the context with skills the task will never use.
Tholo addresses both by selecting. Given a task, it weighs the catalog against it, honors each skill's own stated boundaries to de-conflict overlaps, and returns the small relevant set, not the whole library. When a task is too broad to narrow, it says so rather than dumping everything. When nothing fits, it says that rather than forcing a pick.
- Reads the catalog. Enumerates the skills, their descriptions, categories, and their stated when-to-use and when-NOT-to-use boundaries.
- Plans a task. Decomposes a build task into steps, each a coherent unit of work the catalog has skills for.
- Selects per step. Picks the relevant skills for each step, de-conflicts overlaps using the catalog's own declared boundaries, and prepares the dispatch with the inputs each skill needs.
- Stops where it should. When a step's selection is ambiguous, Tholo asks for a narrower goal instead of guessing. And it never runs the build itself: it prepares the plan and hands the execute decision to a person, because running a build writes files and changes a system.
The through-line: Tholo does the planning and selection, and stops at the two points that are yours, narrowing an ambiguous task and triggering the build.
- Read the framework above: how Tholo plans a task, selects per step against the catalog, and stops at narrowing and at the execute seam.
- Pick the worked example that matches your task from
examples/, the single-step build or the multi-step audit-and-fix, to see the plan shape and where it stops. - Run the operated orchestrator at rampstack.co/tholo against your build task and read the plan it returns.
- Read or build against that plan: follow the selected skills and the prepared dispatch in your own Claude Code session, and own the execute decision Tholo hands back.
A curated entry point into examples/. Open the one closest to your task first.
- Build a landing page - a single-step task with one selected skill, a ready plan, and the execute-seam stop.
- Audit and fix SEO - a multi-step task where one step comes back ambiguous and Tholo stops the plan rather than guess.
- Plan a new-product landing page - a real persisted run, captured verbatim from the operated engine planning that goal.
Tholo is one of three engines RampStack runs against the same catalog: Krine decides, Tholo builds, Basano proves. On the SEO thread, Tholo produces the audit-and-fix plan and Basano verifies the AEO and GEO result on the page.
Building against a Tholo run? The plan shape is documented in schemas/plan.ts as annotated types, carrying only what the published plans already show.
Tholo is built by RampStack, which maintains the open claude-skills catalog Tholo runs on.
- RampStack: rampstack.co
- The catalog: github.com/rampstackco/claude-skills
Tholo is the name of RampStack's open orchestrator, in active use since 2026. The name and its associated branding are used in commerce by RampStack. This documentation, dated and public, is part of that record.