Supabase Postgres Best Practices - Contributor Guide

This skill contains Postgres performance optimization references optimized for AI agents and LLMs. It follows the Agent Skills Open Standard.

Quick Start

# From repository root
npm install

# Validate existing references
npm run validate

# Build AGENTS.md
npm run build

Creating a New Reference

1. Choose a section prefix based on the category:

   • query- Query Performance (CRITICAL)
   • conn- Connection Management (CRITICAL)
   • security- Security & RLS (CRITICAL)
   • schema- Schema Design (HIGH)
   • lock- Concurrency & Locking (MEDIUM-HIGH)
   • data- Data Access Patterns (MEDIUM)
   • monitor- Monitoring & Diagnostics (LOW-MEDIUM)
   • advanced- Advanced Features (LOW)

2. Copy the template:

   cp references/_template.md references/query-your-reference-name.md
   

3. Fill in the content following the template structure

4. Validate and build:

   npm run validate
   npm run build
   

5. Review the generated AGENTS.md

Skill Structure

skills/supabase-postgres-best-practices/
├── SKILL.md           # Agent-facing skill manifest (Agent Skills spec)
├── AGENTS.md          # [GENERATED] Compiled references document
├── README.md          # This file
└── references/
    ├── _template.md      # Reference template
    ├── _sections.md      # Section definitions
    ├── _contributing.md  # Writing guidelines
    └── *.md              # Individual references

packages/skills-build/
├── src/               # Generic build system source
└── package.json       # NPM scripts

Reference File Structure

See references/_template.md for the complete template. Key elements:

---
title: Clear, Action-Oriented Title
impact: CRITICAL|HIGH|MEDIUM-HIGH|MEDIUM|LOW-MEDIUM|LOW
impactDescription: Quantified benefit (e.g., "10-100x faster")
tags: relevant, keywords
---

## [Title]

[1-2 sentence explanation]

**Incorrect (description):**

```sql
-- Comment explaining what's wrong
[Bad SQL example]
```

Correct (description):

-- Comment explaining why this is better
[Good SQL example]

## Writing Guidelines

See `references/_contributing.md` for detailed guidelines. Key principles:

1. **Show concrete transformations** - "Change X to Y", not abstract advice
2. **Error-first structure** - Show the problem before the solution
3. **Quantify impact** - Include specific metrics (10x faster, 50% smaller)
4. **Self-contained examples** - Complete, runnable SQL
5. **Semantic naming** - Use meaningful names (users, email), not (table1, col1)

## Impact Levels

| Level | Improvement | Examples |
|-------|-------------|----------|
| CRITICAL | 10-100x | Missing indexes, connection exhaustion |
| HIGH | 5-20x | Wrong index types, poor partitioning |
| MEDIUM-HIGH | 2-5x | N+1 queries, RLS optimization |
| MEDIUM | 1.5-3x | Redundant indexes, stale statistics |
| LOW-MEDIUM | 1.2-2x | VACUUM tuning, config tweaks |
| LOW | Incremental | Advanced patterns, edge cases |