Black Belt Part A — Build the Platform
Status: drafted · Time: 8 min · Audience: platform-builder Outcome: Understand what Part A teaches, what Green-Belt muscle memory it assumes, and the order to walk it in.
Part A promise. By the end, you can author MCP servers, publish shared skills and plugins through the canonical repositories, prove every promised user surface, decide when to write your own agent with the SDK, orchestrate multi-agent workflows, and design tool contracts that compose.
Prerequisite. Green Belt awarded. Nomination registered with the cohort lead. The chapters assume comfort with G.6 / G.7 (skills), G.8 / G.9 (subagents, worktrees), G.26 (pre-ship-check), and the SKILL.md anatomy those chapters teach. Time budget. ~4h 15m for the six modules; ~8h for Quest B-1. Plan over a week or two.
What you’ll learn
Section titled “What you’ll learn”Green Belt taught you to build with AI: craft, practices, and guardrails that ship into a product repo cleanly. Part A of Black Belt teaches you to build the platform AI runs on: MCP servers other PODs install, shared skills that compound through razorpay/agent-skills, plugins distributed through razorpay/claude-plugins, agent-SDK decisions for bespoke cases, multi-agent orchestration patterns, and tool-contract design.
Six modules, one quest. The boss fight (POD-uplift embed) is in Part C; Black Belt is awarded when all three Parts close.
The six modules
Section titled “The six modules”| § | Chapter | Pillar | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| B.1 | Authoring an internal MCP server | Harness | 60 min |
| B.2 | Publishing a shared skill | Context | 30 min |
| B.3 | Publishing a plugin — package once, prove every surface | Harness | 45 min |
| B.4 | The Claude Agent SDK — when to write your own agent | Harness | 45 min |
| B.5 | Multi-agent orchestration | Harness | 45 min |
| B.6 | Tool design — JSON schemas, output shapes, error contracts | Harness | 30 min |
Walk them in order on a first read. B.1 anchors the platform-builder voice; B.2 and B.3 are the publishing layer; B.4 is the build-vs-buy decision; B.5 and B.6 are the systems-design layer.
Quest B-1
Section titled “Quest B-1”Quest B-1 — Publish a shared skill. Publish a repository-native skill so another POD can install it with one command. At least two installs from PODs outside your team.
The quest is the practical test of B.2. Read B.3 before starting so you can explain why the shared library, rather than plugin packaging, is the right distribution surface for your workflow.
What you can say after Part A
Section titled “What you can say after Part A”“I author MCP servers, publish shared skills and plugins, prove each supported user surface, and design tool contracts other teams compose with.”
What comes next
Section titled “What comes next”Part B (Push the Craft) covers progressive disclosure, memory systems, prompt evals, team-and-org-scale observability, effort settings and model routing. Part C (Shape the Org) covers running office hours, embedded sprints, AI RFCs, API Council contributions, and skill / plugin governance. Both are drafted; walk Part A first.
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