Combinatorial Optimization Skills for Claude Code

A curated set of 76 Claude Code skills covering exact methods, metaheuristics, classic problems, and research workflow for combinatorial optimization.

What is this

Claude Code skills are markdown instruction files (SKILL.md) that Claude Code loads on demand. When a prompt matches a skill's topic, Claude Code reads the file and follows its frameworks, decision rules, and reference implementations. Skills make answers more consistent and more technically precise than relying on the base model alone.

This collection covers combinatorial optimization end to end: MILP modeling and decomposition methods, 22 metaheuristic algorithm families, encodings and operators, 17 classic problem classes, Python tooling for experiments, and empirical methodology. It is written for operations research and industrial engineering students, PhD researchers, and practitioners who build optimization code in Python with solvers such as Gurobi, OR-Tools CP-SAT, and HiGHS.

Installation

Requires Claude Code. The skills are plain markdown; no other dependencies are needed to install them.

Plugin route (recommended)

Run inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add hajibabaie/combinatorial-optimization-skills
/plugin install combinatorial-optimization@combinatorial-optimization-skills

This installs all 76 skills at once as the combinatorial-optimization plugin. To pull new and updated skills later, run /plugin marketplace update combinatorial-optimization-skills.

skills.sh route (cross-agent)

The repository is also compatible with the skills.sh CLI, the open Agent Skills Directory. It reads the same .claude-plugin/marketplace.json and works across Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, and other agents:

npx skills add hajibabaie/combinatorial-optimization-skills

Manual route

Clone the repository and copy any skill folder into your user skills directory:

git clone https://github.com/hajibabaie/combinatorial-optimization-skills.git
cp -r combinatorial-optimization-skills/skills/milp-modeling-gurobi ~/.claude/skills/

Repeat for each skill you want. Claude Code picks up new skills in ~/.claude/skills/ automatically.

On Windows, the same directory is C:\Users\<you>\.claude\skills\.

Quick start

After installation, prompts like these trigger the matching skills:

Formulate a MIP for scheduling 40 jobs on 5 unrelated parallel machines with release dates, minimizing total weighted tardiness. Build it in gurobipy.

Triggers problem-formulation, parallel-machine-scheduling, and milp-modeling-gurobi.

Design an ALNS for a capacitated VRP with heterogeneous fleet. Propose destroy and repair operators and an adaptive weight scheme.

Triggers large-neighborhood-search and vehicle-routing-problem.

I ran two metaheuristics on 30 instances with 10 seeds each. Which statistical test shows whether one is better, and how do I report the result?

Triggers algorithm-benchmarking-statistics and pandas-experiment-management.