Conciseness

The body is efficient and assumes competence — no tutorials on CSS or Obsidian — but it can be tightened: the "Translate Before Editing" phrase bullets ("tabs above the note", "arrows/book/dots above the note", etc.) substantially duplicate the Stable Layer Stack table a few lines below, and both overlap the reference's larger mapping table. It is not level 5 because redundant mapping content costs tokens; not level 3 because there is no concept-explaining padding.

Actionability

Mostly executable guidance with real paths and commands: "Read `<vault>/.obsidian/appearance.json`", "`enabledCssSnippets` as the active styling source of truth", checkpoints to "`.obsidian/snippet-archive/`", and "`screencapture -R<x,y,w,h> out.png". It stops short of level 5 because the central patch step ("edit one owning layer") and the reload mechanism are described abstractly rather than as concrete commands, and the mapping pipeline block is schematic rather than copy-paste ready.

Workflow Clarity

The 13-step Operating Loop is a clear sequence with explicit validation (the Screenshot Gate: "CSS validity is not visual success") and genuine feedback loops for error recovery ("If it fails, inspect ownership or restore", "If a direction fails twice, restore the last good checkpoint and change the ownership model", the Failure Signals diagnostic list, and the refactor-only-after-acceptance rule). This matches the level-5 anchor: checkpoints, validation, and recovery are all explicit.

Progressive Disclosure

The reference is real, one level deep, and well-signaled with explicit read conditions ("Read `references/workflow-reference.md` when: …"), but the body inlines a layer-stack mapping table that substantially duplicates the reference's translation table, so the split between overview and detail is not clean. Level 4 rather than 5: good structure with a minor organization gap; not level 3 because the reference is clearly signaled and navigation is easy.

Specificity

The description lists multiple concrete actions — "restyle Obsidian", "tune a vault's visual layout", "adjust tabs, sidebars, note surfaces, properties, backlinks, graph panes, file explorer rows, icons, links, shadows, active states", and "refactored without changing the current appearance" — with comprehensive coverage of the Obsidian UI surface. It goes beyond the level-4 anchor because both the action verbs and the target objects are fully enumerated rather than leaving minor gaps.

Completeness

It explicitly answers both questions: the "what" is stated concretely ("Workflow for working with the user on changing how Obsidian looks using CSS snippets") and the "when" is explicit with two trigger clauses ("Use this whenever the user asks to restyle… Also use it when the user says a visual CSS change did nothing…"). This matches the level-5 anchor exactly.

Trigger Term Quality

Natural user phrasing is comprehensively covered: UI nouns users would actually say ("tabs", "sidebars", "file explorer rows", "backlinks", "CSS snippets") plus complaint phrases in the user's own voice ("did nothing", "still looks wrapped", "is not lifted", "is unreadable"). No natural terms are missing; third-person voice is used correctly with no first/second person to penalize.

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

"Obsidian" is named repeatedly and the skill occupies a clear niche (vault CSS snippet restyling with failure diagnosis), so it is easily distinguished from generic CSS or app-styling skills with minimal conflict risk.