Imported from feiiiiii5/Liger-Kernel-bak (.agents/skills/liger-kernel-dev/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add feiiiiii5/Liger-Kernel-bak --skill liger-kernel-dev. Copyright stays with the author.

Liger Kernel Dev

Develops Triton kernels for Liger Kernel through a 3-stage pipeline with human review between stages. Supports creating new kernels and modifying existing ones. NVIDIA GPUs only.

Mode Detection

• Create mode: User asks to create/add/generate/write/build a new kernel → full pipeline
• Modify mode: User asks to update/fix/change/extend an existing kernel → skip Analyze, modify files, then Validate

Pipeline (Create Mode)

Stage 1: Analyze

Follow the Analyzer workflow in analyzer.md. If the host runtime supports parallel subagents, this stage may be delegated to one; otherwise execute the workflow directly.

Accepts any input: local file, URL, code snippet, natural language description, or model component reference. Produces a standalone PyTorch reference implementation and a kernel profile.

Human checkpoint: Present PyTorch reference + kernel profile. Confirm before proceeding.

Stage 2: Generate

Follow the Generator workflow in generator.md.

Generates/modifies up to 8 files:

1. src/liger_kernel/ops/{kernel}.py — NEW Triton kernels + autograd Function
2. src/liger_kernel/transformers/{kernel}.py — NEW nn.Module wrapper
3. src/liger_kernel/transformers/functional.py — MODIFY add functional API
4. src/liger_kernel/ops/__init__.py — MODIFY export Function class
5. src/liger_kernel/transformers/__init__.py — MODIFY export Module + __all__
6. test/transformers/test_{kernel}.py — NEW unit tests
7. benchmark/scripts/benchmark_{kernel}.py — NEW benchmark script
8. benchmark/data/all_benchmark_data.csv — MODIFY (after benchmarks run)

Human checkpoint: Present changes for review.

Stage 3: Validate

Follow the Validator workflow in validator.md.

Runs checkstyle, unit tests (hard gate — stops on persistent failure), benchmarks, and generates plots. Optionally runs ncu profiling.

Human checkpoint: Report final results with benchmark numbers and plots.

Pipeline (Modify Mode)

1. Read existing kernel files to understand current implementation
2. Understand the requested modification
3. Make targeted changes (Generator handles this)
4. Run full Validate stage (same as create mode)

Reference Files

• kernel-profile-format.md — Kernel profile schema and field descriptions
• examples/swiglu-profile.md — Tier 1 (element-wise) reference
• examples/rms-norm-profile.md — Tier 2 (reduction) reference
• examples/cross-entropy-profile.md — Tier 3 (fused/complex) reference
• Templates in templates/ — Code generation patterns for each file type