Conciseness

The body is tight and assumes competence: no concept explanations, and concrete specifics like the state-file fields and passing-artifact JSON examples. It falls short of lean-perfection only through minor duplication — 'Direct CLI launch is gone' in Core contract item 4 is restated as 'No direct CLI launch. No tmux split-pane launch.' in the Migration note, and 'hard-deprecated' appears twice — matching the 'efficient; minor instances that could be trimmed' anchor.

Actionability

Concrete, executable guidance throughout: exact state path (`.omx/state/.../autoresearch-state.json`) with an enumerated field list, full example JSON artifacts with concrete paths, exact invocation syntax (`$deep-interview --autoresearch`), and a numbered flow naming the files to materialize. It stops short of copy-paste-ready because the `...` path segment is elided and no example `mission_validator_command` is given — 'mostly executable guidance with minor gaps'.

Workflow Clarity

The 'Recommended flow' is a clear 5-step sequence whose centerpiece is an explicit validation gate: 'Let stop-hook / auto-nudge continue until the completion artifact satisfies the chosen validation mode' plus the rule that the loop 'does not stop because the model says "done", because a stop hook fired once, or because several turns were no-ops'. Both validation modes have concrete passing-artifact examples defining acceptance criteria, and the loop-until-validated design is itself the validate→continue feedback loop. Validation here is not merely 'mostly present' (anchor 4) — it is the explicit core contract.

Progressive Disclosure

No bundle files exist, and the ~65-line body is organized into clear, well-labeled sections (Boundary, Use when, Do not use when, Core contract, Completion artifact contract, Recommended flow, Migration note) that are easy to navigate. It scores 4 rather than 5 because the file runs a bit denser than a lean overview — the inline JSON artifact examples push it past the under-50-line self-contained case the scoring notes exempt — though nothing currently warrants splitting.

Specificity

The description names the domain ("research loop") but expresses capabilities only as jargon modifiers — "Stateful", "validator-gated", "native-hook persistence" — with no concrete actions or verbs. It sits at the 'names the domain but actions are minimal or generic' anchor: more substantive than pure abstraction (not 1), but unlike the score-3 anchor it lists no concrete actions like 'extracts text' or 'fills forms'.

Completeness

The 'what' is stated (a validator-gated persistent research loop) but the 'when' is entirely absent — no 'Use when...' clause or equivalent trigger guidance, which caps this dimension at 3 per the judging guidelines. It is not 2 because the 'what' is specific rather than vague, and not 4 because the 'when' is missing outright rather than merely under-specified.

Trigger Term Quality

"research" is the single quasi-natural keyword; everything else ("validator-gated", "stateful", "native-hook persistence") is technical jargon no user would say, and there are no natural trigger phrases or synonyms. This matches the score-2 anchor ('one or two generic keywords; missing the natural phrases users say') better than score 1 only because 'research' is a term users genuinely utter.

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

The niche is fairly distinct — "validator-gated research loop with native-hook persistence" is unlikely to trigger for unrelated skills — with only minor overlap risk against general research or iteration skills. It falls short of 5 because no explicit trigger phrases sharpen the boundary against those closely related research skills.