Conciseness

The body is dense with actionable tables, checklists, and a worked expand/contract example, with only minor trimmable padding — the motivational line 'Most engineering organizations are good at building things. Few are good at removing them.' and overlap between the Overview and Core Principles sections. Not anchor 5 because a few philosophical passages restate points Claude can infer.

Actionability

Concrete guidance throughout: a fill-in deprecation notice template, executable TypeScript adapter and feature-flag snippets, a 5-step expand/contract worked example, and specific commands like 'CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY' and batched backfills. It falls short of anchor 5 because the code uses placeholder classes and illustrative tools ('npx migrate-check') rather than copy-paste-ready examples.

Workflow Clarity

The 4-step migration process is clearly sequenced with explicit validation checkpoints ('Verify zero active usage (metrics, logs, dependency analysis)', 'Confirm no regressions'), error-recovery guidance ('if step 4 misbehaves, roll the code back'), and verification checklists for both deprecation and schema migration. Destructive/batch operations here do have validation and feedback loops, so the cap at 3 does not apply.

Progressive Disclosure

No bundle files exist, so all content lives in one ~250-line SKILL.md — but it is well-organized with clear headers, scannable tables, and a When to Use section. This fits anchor 4 (good structure, most content appropriately placed); it is not 5 because the Migration Patterns section is long enough that patterns like Strangler/Adapter could arguably live in a separate reference file, and not 3 since nothing is buried or unstructured.

Specificity

The 'what' statement 'Manages deprecation and migration' is abstract, but the description names several concrete scenarios — 'removing old systems, APIs, or features', 'migrating users from one implementation to another', 'renaming or dropping a column without downtime (expand/contract)'. It stops short of anchor 5 because the skill's own actions are never enumerated (compare 'Extract text and tables from PDF files, fill forms, merge documents').

Completeness

Both parts are explicit: the 'what' ('Manages deprecation and migration') and four 'Use when...' clauses with concrete trigger phrases covering removal, user migration, production schema migration, and maintain-vs-sunset decisions. The 'when' is far more explicit than anchor 4's caveat ('when could be more explicit or specific'), matching the anchor 5 pattern of the good examples.

Trigger Term Quality

Good natural keyword coverage: 'deprecation', 'migration', 'removing old systems, APIs', 'database schema', 'renaming or dropping a column', 'downtime', 'sunset'. A few common user phrases are missing ('legacy code', 'phase out', 'retire'), so it fits anchor 4 rather than the comprehensive synonym coverage of anchor 5.

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

A clear niche (deprecation/migration lifecycle) with distinctive triggers like 'expand/contract' and 'sunset'. Minor overlap risk remains with closely related skills such as general refactoring or database tooling skills, so anchor 4 fits better than 5.