Conciseness

The body assumes Claude's competence (no explanations of graphs, PDGs, or planning concepts) and is dense with real constraints, but the evidence-provenance/write-plan/read-plan contract is restated in Hard rules, Phase 4, Phase 5, and twice in Deepen mode even though references/evidence-provenance.md owns the detail — 'mostly efficient but could be tightened'. Not 4: the repetition across four sections is more than 'minor instances of over-explanation'; not 2: there is no padding or teaching of known concepts.

Actionability

Guidance is fully executable for an instruction-only skill: exact tool signatures ('query {search_query, task_context}', 'impact {target, direction}'), exact commands ('node .gitnexus/run.cjs analyze --index-only', 'scripts/evidence-provenance.mjs write-plan'), a normalized output path format ('docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-gitnexus-plan-<slug>.md'), per-category budgets in a table, and per-knob defaults with meanings. Every step names the precise command or call to make.

Workflow Clarity

Phases 0–5 plus Deepen and Fallback modes are clearly sequenced, with explicit validation checkpoints throughout: the freshness gate and analyzer provenance check before refresh, one-retry rules for ambiguous results, source verification mandatory before citation, 're-anchor before re-pinning', digest/path mismatch blocking publication, and safe-write failure blocking plan release. These are genuine validate→fix→retry feedback loops of the kind the rubric rewards for write operations.

Progressive Disclosure

Structure is good: each reference file is real, one level deep, and its ownership is stated at the point of reference ('references/pdg-slice.md … owns the tool calls, inclusion criteria, depth bounds'), and the script's byte contract is delegated to references/evidence-provenance.md. Not 5: the ~330-line body inlines a fair amount of provenance-writer and Deepen-mode detail that duplicates what the reference files already own, so the split is not as clean as a pure overview-plus-references layout.

Specificity

Concrete actions are named — 'deep, implementation-ready engineering plan', 'built from GitNexus graph intelligence, statement-level PDG analysis, and targeted source verification', 'strengthens existing plans via Deepen mode' — covering both modes with only minor gaps (e.g., producing the machine-readable context pack is not named as an action). Not 5: it stops slightly short of the 'multiple specific concrete actions; comprehensive coverage' anchor; not 3: it clearly exceeds '1-2 concrete actions'.

Completeness

Explicitly answers both questions: the what ('implementation-ready engineering plan for a code change — built from GitNexus graph intelligence, statement-level PDG analysis, and targeted source verification') and the when ('Use when you need a deep, implementation-ready engineering plan for a code change', plus concrete trigger examples). This matches the anchor-5 example structure of 'action list + Use when... with concrete trigger phrases'.

Trigger Term Quality

Natural phrases users would say are present — 'engineering plan', 'plan for a code change', 'plan this change', 'knowledge graph', 'deepen' — reinforced by realistic invocation examples ('/gitnexus-plan Add retry support to the ingestion pipeline'). Not 5: common synonyms like 'blueprint', 'design', or 'implementation plan' phrasing variations are absent; not 3: coverage goes well beyond 'some relevant keywords'.

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

The GitNexus/PDG vocabulary carves a clear niche with distinct triggers, and Deepen mode is a distinctive capability. Not 5: the opening 'engineering plan for a code change' territory overlaps with generic planning/architecture skills that don't involve GitNexus; not 3: the 'gitnexus' / slash-command triggers make confusion with unrelated skills unlikely.