writing-clearly-and-concisely

Apply Strunk's timeless writing rules to ANY prose humans will read—documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text. Makes your writing clearer, stronger, and more professional.

1.02x

Quality

71%

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

94%

1.02x

Average score across 3 eval scenarios

Securityby

Passed

No findings from the security scan

Fix and improve this skill with Tessl

tessl review fix ./tests/ext_conformance/artifacts/agents-mikeastock/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/SKILL.md

Quality

Content

60%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

The body is a well-organized, token-conscious overview that summarizes Strunk's rules tersely and clearly signals its one external reference. Its critical defect is that `elements-of-style.md` — which the body instructs Claude to read in three separate places and on which the entire skill depends — is missing from the bundle, leaving the skill without its substantive content and with no application examples to fall back on.

Suggestions

Ship the referenced `elements-of-style.md` in a `references/` directory (or remove/repair the reference) — the body's core instruction depends on a file that is not present in the bundle.

Add 2-3 short before/after examples for the bolded key rules (active voice, omit needless words, concrete language) so the skill retains some actionable value even without the external guide.

Trim the redundancy between "When to Use", the bolded trigger line, and "Bottom Line" — one of these can carry the message alone, and the subagent strategy only needs to be stated once.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The body is lean: the 18 rules are compressed to one line each, it assumes Claude's competence, and the ~12,000-token warning is genuinely useful token-budget guidance. Not a 5 because the "When to Use" list, the bolded "If you're writing sentences for a human to read, use this skill", and the "Bottom Line" section repeat the same trigger and the same read-the-guide/subagent advice three times.	4 / 5
Actionability	The rules are stated as concrete directives ("Use active voice", "Omit needless words") and the subagent fallback is a numbered procedure, but there are no before/after examples showing how to apply any rule, "Section V: Alphabetical reference for usage questions" points to nothing usable, and the primary instruction — "Read `elements-of-style.md`" — targets a file that does not exist in the bundle. Not a 4 because the missing reference and absent application examples leave key executable detail missing.	3 / 5
Workflow Clarity	The default path (read the guide, apply the rules) is unambiguous and the context-constrained path is a clearly numbered 3-step sequence with an explicit decision condition ("When context is tight"). Not a 5 because the workflow's central step cannot actually be executed — `elements-of-style.md` is absent from the bundle — and the subagent step gives no detail on what to instruct it to do beyond the copyedit task.	4 / 5
Progressive Disclosure	The body is structured as a proper overview with a single, clearly signaled, one-level-deep reference (`elements-of-style.md`, flagged with a token-cost warning). However, the bundle contains no references/, scripts/, or assets/ directories at all — the one referenced file does not exist, so the disclosure structure collapses at the point of use and the skill's actual content is unreachable. Not a 3 because the in-file organization, while good, points entirely to a nonexistent resource.	2 / 5
	Total	13 / 20 Passed

Description

71%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

A strong description that clearly states what the skill does and enumerates concrete prose types it applies to, with good natural trigger terms. Its main weaknesses are the generic outcome language ("clearer, stronger, more professional"), the lack of an explicit "Use when..." clause, and an overly broad scope claim that raises conflict risk with specialized writing skills.

Suggestions

Add an explicit trigger clause, e.g. "Use when writing or editing any prose for humans — docs, commit messages, error messages, reports, UI copy — or when the user asks to make text clearer or more concise."

Replace the vague outcome phrase "Makes your writing clearer, stronger, and more professional" with the concrete mechanisms (e.g., active voice, cutting needless words, concrete language).

Include common user phrasings like "wordy", "concise", "tighten up", or "copyedit" as trigger synonyms.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	"Apply Strunk's timeless writing rules" names the method, and "documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text" lists several concrete application targets. Not a 5 because the actions themselves are generic ("Makes your writing clearer, stronger, and more professional") with no specific techniques named beyond 'Strunk's rules'.	4 / 5
Completeness	The 'what' is clear (apply Strunk's rules to improve prose) and the 'when' is given as explicit trigger guidance ("ANY prose humans will read" plus an enumerated list of prose types). Not a 5 because there is no explicit "Use when..." clause and the when-guidance is woven into the what-statement rather than stated as a separate trigger.	4 / 5
Trigger Term Quality	Natural phrases users would say are present: "documentation", "commit messages", "error messages", "reports", "UI text", "explanations". Not a 5 because common variations like "wordy", "concise", "tighten this up", "copyedit", or "README" are missing.	4 / 5
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	The Strunk/style-guide framing gives it a recognizable niche, but the claimed scope "ANY prose humans will read" would trigger for nearly every writing task, creating real overlap risk with dedicated commit-message, documentation, or UI-copy skills. Not a 4 because the deliberately broad scope invites conflicts with more specialized skills.	3 / 5
	Total	15 / 20 Passed

Validation

93%

Warnings & errors only

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation — 15 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

Criteria	Description	Result
metadata_version	'metadata.version' is missing	Warning

	Total	15 / 16 Passed

Repository: Dicklesworthstone/pi_agent_rust
Path: tests/ext_conformance/artifacts/agents-mikeastock/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/SKILL.md
Commit: 277df00

Reviewed: 7 days ago

Table of Contents

Discovery Implementation Validation

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