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principle-make-operations-idempotent

Apply when designing commands, lifecycle steps, or processing loops that run amid crashes, restarts, and retries. Converge to the same end state regardless of partial prior runs.

63

Quality

79%

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tessl review fix ./plugins/pstack/skills/principle-make-operations-idempotent/SKILL.md
SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

78%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.

A lean, well-structured principle skill that gives concrete technique bullets, an explicit three-question validation test, and a clear decision rule for when reconciliation is needed. Its main gaps are the near-verbatim duplication of the test questions in the intro, the unsequenced pattern menu, and the absence of a worked example showing the pattern applied. It is far from the verbose or nested-reference bad examples.

Suggestions

Merge the intro's rhetorical questions with 'The test' section to remove the duplicated 'What happens if this runs twice / crashed halfway' phrasing.

Add one short worked example (e.g. a startup or cleanup snippet showing convergent startup and PID-based lock detection in practice) to lift actionability from good to copy-paste-concrete.

Order or scope 'The pattern' bullets (e.g. indicate which apply to startup vs. cleanup vs. scheduling) so the reader knows when to reach for each technique.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The body is tight and assumes Claude's competence with no concept over-explanation, but the opening questions ("What happens if this runs twice? What happens if the previous run crashed halfway?") are restated nearly verbatim in 'The test', a minor duplication that could be merged — 'efficient; minor instances that could be trimmed' rather than a flawless 5.

4 / 5

Actionability

Concrete technique directives are given ("use PID-based stale lock detection", "compare by content equivalence, not creation order", "adopt live sessions") along with an explicit remediation rule, but there is no worked example or code applying the pattern to a real command or loop, leaving minor gaps for an instruction-only skill.

4 / 5

Workflow Clarity

The verification checklist ('The test' 1-3) and the feedback rule ("If any answer is 'it depends on what state was left behind,' the operation needs a reconciliation step") provide explicit validation with recovery, but 'The pattern' bullets are an unordered menu with no sequencing guidance for when to apply each technique — 'clear sequence with most checkpoints present; minor gaps'.

4 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

The skill is under 50 lines with no bundle files and no need for external references; its content is fully and appropriately contained in well-organized sections (Why, The pattern, The test), meeting the simple-skill exception for a top score.

5 / 5

Total

17

/

20

Passed

Description

70%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 solid description with an explicit and specific 'when' clause plus a clear convergence goal, though it never uses the word 'idempotent' — the most natural term a user would say when they need this skill. The 'what' is stated as a property to achieve rather than a set of concrete actions. It is well above the vague bad examples and just short of the top anchors.

Suggestions

Include the headline term 'idempotent' (or 'idempotency') and common synonyms like 'safe to re-run' or 'exactly-once' in the description, since users asking for this skill most often say 'make this idempotent'.

Make the 'what' more concrete by naming the specific actions the skill guides, e.g. 'Design idempotent operations: scan for existing state, detect stale locks, reconcile partial state' instead of the abstract 'Converge to the same end state'.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

The description names its domain ("designing commands, lifecycle steps, or processing loops") and a target outcome ("Converge to the same end state regardless of partial prior runs"), but the stated action is an abstract property rather than concrete operations, matching 'names domain and 1-2 concrete actions' rather than the several specific actions of a 4.

3 / 5

Completeness

It explicitly answers 'when' ("Apply when designing commands, lifecycle steps, or processing loops that run amid crashes, restarts, and retries") and 'what' ("Converge to the same end state regardless of partial prior runs"), so the missing-trigger cap of 3 does not apply; the 'what' remains abstract rather than concrete, placing it just below the 5 anchor.

4 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

Natural phrases users would say are present ("commands", "processing loops", "crashes, restarts, and retries"), but the single most natural trigger term — 'idempotent'/'idempotency' — is missing, fitting 'good keyword coverage; a few natural terms missing' rather than the comprehensive synonym coverage of a 5.

4 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

The crash/restart/retry convergence design niche is mostly distinct ("partial prior runs", "lifecycle steps"), with only minor overlap risk against general reliability or error-handling skills, matching 'mostly distinct; minor overlap risk'.

4 / 5

Total

15

/

20

Passed

Validation

100%

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

Validation — 16 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

No warnings or errors.

Repository

adamsardo/pstack-claude

Path

plugins/pstack/skills/principle-make-operations-idempotent/SKILL.md

Reviewed

Table of Contents

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