Suno Songsmith

---
name: suno-songsmith
description: >-
  Turn a song or album idea into release-ready Suno material: a precise Style
  prompt, fully structured lyrics with metatags, a title, and the iteration plan
  to refine it. Use this skill whenever the user wants to make music with Suno
  (or Suno AI / Suno V5 / V5.5), write song lyrics intended for AI music
  generation, build a Style prompt, format lyrics with metatags/structure tags,
  plan a concept album, write a genre-switch or beat-switch song (a track that
  starts in one genre and erupts into another), or asks for help "making a song,"
  "writing a track," "generating music," or "a Suno prompt" — even if they don't
  name Suno
  explicitly but describe wanting AI-generated music with a vibe, genre, or mood.
  Claude is the pre-production engine; it produces everything the user pastes
  into Suno, since Suno itself has no public API.
---

# Suno Songsmith

## What this skill is for

Suno generates a complete song — vocals, instruments, arrangement, and mix —
from text. The gap between "interesting AI music" and "music I'd actually
release" is almost entirely **pre-production**: a precise prompt, deliberate song
structure, and well-crafted lyrics. That pre-production is exactly what Claude is
good at, and it's what this skill delivers.

Claude does **not** generate audio (Suno has no public API). The deliverable is
always text the user copies into Suno's Custom Mode: a **Style prompt**, a
**Lyrics block with metatags**, a **Title**, and a short **iteration plan** for
refining the result. Be honest about this boundary — never imply Claude produced
a playable track.

## The mental model: three control systems

Suno's Custom Mode is the only mode worth using for serious work. It exposes
three independent controls, and good output comes from using all three together:

1. **Style field** — natural-language genre, tempo, instrumentation, vocal
   character, production, mood. Defines *what* the song is.
2. **Lyrics field** — the words, plus `[bracketed]` metatags that direct
   arrangement and per-section behavior. Defines *structure*.
3. **Creative Sliders** — Weirdness, Style Influence, Audio Influence. Define
   *how literally* Suno reads the prompt.

A great Style prompt with no structure tags, or great lyrics with a vague style,
both underperform. Always address all three.

## Workflow

Follow this whether the request is one track or a whole album. Don't dump the
whole process on the user at once — move through it conversationally.

### 1. Capture the brief
Get just enough to start: the **core idea or emotion**, a **genre or reference
vibe**, and **whether it has vocals**. If the user is vague ("make something
chill"), propose a concrete direction rather than interrogating them. One round
of clarifying questions maximum; infer the rest and state your assumptions.

### 2. Lock the style
Build the Style prompt using the formula and descriptor rules in
`references/prompt-architecture.md`. The single most important rule: **4–7
descriptors**. Fewer gives Suno too much freedom; more makes the descriptors
fight each other and produces mud. Read that file before writing any Style
prompt.

### 3. Write the lyrics (skip if instrumental)
Write real lyrics with genuine craft — structure, prosody, rhyme, and a hook
that lands. The bar is "sounds like a specific person wrote it from lived
experience," not "competent": favor concrete sensory detail over abstraction,
conversational phrasing over poetry, and actively avoid the AI-cliché tells
(neon, shadows, whispers, echoes, etc.). Then mark them up with metatags — and
use sung ad-libs in `(parentheses)` for backing vocals and energy where the genre
calls for it. Lyric craft, the anti-AI-tell list, and title-writing are in
`references/songwriting.md`; the full metatag and ad-lib/formatting vocabulary is
in `references/metatags.md`. Read both before writing lyrics.

### 4. Assemble the deliverable
Hand the user a clean, copy-paste-ready block in the exact format below.

### 5. Give the iteration plan
Suno is non-deterministic and the same prompt yields different takes. Tell the
user to generate a batch, pick the best, and refine — not to expect a perfect
first shot. Include 1–2 specific things to adjust if the first batch misses
(e.g., "if the chorus feels too busy, drop one instrument descriptor"). The full
generation loop and troubleshooting table are in
`references/prompt-architecture.md`.

For **albums**, do concept and tracklist work first — see
`references/album-production.md` — then run steps 2–5 per track while keeping a
consistent sonic identity across the record.

For **genre-switch / beat-switch songs** (a track that starts one genre and
erupts into another), the ordinary workflow isn't enough — the switch has to be
*earned* by the emotional concept, and Suno needs specific cues to perform it.
Read `references/genre-switch.md` and follow its method whenever the request
involves a genre change, beat switch, or "starts X, turns into Y."

## Required output format

Always deliver in this structure so the user can paste each part into the
matching Suno field:

```
🎵 TITLE
<the song title>

🎛️ STYLE PROMPT  (paste into the "Style" field)
<4–7 comma-separated descriptors: genre, tempo, key instruments, vocal style, production, mood>

🎤 LYRICS  (paste into the "Lyrics" field)
[Intro]
...
[Verse 1]
...
[Chorus]
...
(full structured lyrics with metatags; omit this block entirely if instrumental)

🎚️ SLIDER SUGGESTIONS
Weirdness: <low/mid/high + one-line why>
Style Influence: <loose/default/strong + why>

🔁 ITERATION PLAN
- Generate <N> variations and pick the closest.
- If <likely problem>, then <specific fix>.
```

For instrumentals, drop the LYRICS block but still include a short
`[Instrumental]`-tagged structure outline so Suno knows the arrangement.

## Hard guardrails

- **Never put a real artist's name in the Style prompt.** "Sounds like
  [artist]" is unreliable, often filtered by Suno, and a copyright risk.
  Translate the reference into descriptive equivalents instead — e.g., instead
  of a named pop star, write "powerful belted female vocals, piano-driven pop
  ballad, stadium-sized production." This is both the safe choice and the one
  that actually works better.
- **Don't help recreate a specific existing copyrighted song.** Original
  composition only.
- **Write original lyrics.** Never reproduce copyrighted lyrics, and if the user
  pastes lyrics that look like a known song, flag it rather than formatting them.
- Adding genuine human creative input (original lyrics, real recorded elements,
  arrangement choices) is what gives the user a real ownership claim — mention
  this when relevant, but don't lecture.

## Reference files

Read the relevant file(s) before doing that part of the work — don't work from
memory, since Suno's behavior and tags are specific and change between versions.

- `references/prompt-architecture.md` — Style field formula, descriptor menus by
  category, Creative Sliders, the iterate-don't-pray generation loop, and a
  troubleshooting table. **Read before writing any Style prompt.**
- `references/metatags.md` — Full metatag vocabulary: structural, vocal,
  instrumental, dynamic, the per-section `[Section: modifiers]` syntax, sung
  ad-libs in `(parentheses)`, and using text formatting (caps, ellipses,
  stretched vowels) as vocal direction. **Read before structuring lyrics.**
- `references/songwriting.md` — Lyric craft for AI vocals: song forms, prosody
  and syllable matching, rhyme (incl. multisyllabic chains), hooks, the
  sound-human / anti-AI-cliché toolkit, title writing, per-genre lyric notes, and
  pronunciation traps. **Read before writing lyrics.**
- `references/album-production.md` — Concept development, tracklist sequencing,
  sonic cohesion across a record, interludes, and a release checklist. **Read
  for any multi-track or album request.**
- `references/genre-switch.md` — The method for genre-switch / beat-switch songs:
  making the switch emotionally earned, the soft→hard skeleton, multisyllabic
  rhyme for the fast section, "ramp in, cut out" transitions, and the Suno cues
  that make the flip actually happen. **Read for any genre-change request.**