timeboxed-iterating

Use when the user specifies a task and a duration, and the work should be done iteratively by subagents over that time period

Quality

75%

Does it follow best practices?

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Securityby

Passed

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tessl review fix ./.agents/skills/timeboxed-iterating/SKILL.md

Quality

Content

81%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.

An unusually actionable orchestration skill: every step has exact commands, file templates, and a ready-to-use subagent prompt, and the clock-check loop is validated before every dispatch with recovery paths for stalls. The main cost is redundancy — the anti-early-exit message is repeated across four sections, inflating token usage without adding guidance.

Suggestions

Consolidate 'The Iron Law', 'Preventing Premature Exit', and 'Red Flags' into a single section — their content overlaps heavily and the repetition costs context tokens on every invocation.

Trim or cut the 'Quick Reference' table, which restates the Process and failure-mode sections almost verbatim.

Add a concrete remedy for the hung-subagent red flag (e.g. 'dispatched >30 minutes ago with no return') — currently it says only 'STOP and Reread This Skill', leaving the actual recovery action undefined.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The body is punchy, imperative, and free of concept explanations Claude already knows, but the stop-discipline message is repeated across four sections — 'The Iron Law', 'Your Role' ("You do NOT do any actual work"), the 'Preventing Premature Exit' table, and 'Red Flags' — and the 'Quick Reference' table largely restates earlier sections. This matches 'mostly efficient but could be tightened' (anchor 3) rather than the minor-trim anchor 4.	3 / 5
Actionability	Fully executable throughout: exact commands (`date +%s`), a concrete progress-file path template (`/tmp/timeboxed-<goal-slug>-<timestamp>.md`) with literal markdown contents, a step-numbered loop, and a copy-paste-ready subagent prompt template. Nothing is pseudocode or hand-wavy.	5 / 5
Workflow Clarity	The loop is explicitly sequenced (record start → create progress file → check clock → dispatch → update → re-check) with the time check enforced as a validation checkpoint BEFORE every dispatch, a stall-recovery feedback loop (reframe angle → increase depth → broaden scope), and a red-flags checklist for error detection. This matches the anchor-5 pattern of clear sequence plus explicit checkpoints plus recovery loops.	5 / 5
Progressive Disclosure	A single, well-sectioned file with no external bundle files — appropriate for a self-contained orchestration skill of this size, with clear headers (Role, Inputs, Process, failure modes, Quick Reference) making navigation easy. It is not the anchor-5 case (no one-level-deep references to signal), and there are minor organization gaps from redundant sections, so anchor 4 fits best.	4 / 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 well-formed description with an explicit and natural 'Use when' trigger condition and a distinct niche. Its main weakness is specificity: it states the mechanism abstractly rather than listing the concrete actions (dispatch subagents, track progress, terminate on the clock).

Suggestions

Add 1-2 concrete actions to the description, e.g. 'Dispatches subagents in a loop, tracks progress in a file, and terminates solely on the clock' — this would raise specificity from anchor 3 toward 5.

Include natural trigger synonyms users actually say, such as 'run for N hours', 'keep working until', 'timebox', or 'overnight', to broaden trigger-term coverage.

Optionally state the outcome (e.g. 'maximizes productive work within the given duration') so the 'what' half is as concrete as the 'when' half.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	The description names the domain and one concrete mechanism ("the work should be done iteratively by subagents over that time period") but lists no specific actions such as dispatching subagents, tracking progress, or clock-based termination. It sits between anchor 2 (minimal actions) and anchor 3 (1-2 concrete actions), matching the latter since 'iterative subagent execution' is a concrete capability statement.	3 / 5
Completeness	Both parts are explicit: "Use when the user specifies a task and a duration..." answers 'when' clearly, and "the work should be done iteratively by subagents over that time period" answers 'what'. The 'what' is somewhat abstract compared to the concrete action lists in the anchor-5 example, so it fits anchor 4 rather than 5.	4 / 5
Trigger Term Quality	Good natural keyword coverage: "specifies a task and a duration", "iteratively by subagents", "time period" — phrases a user asking for a timeboxed run would naturally use. It misses common synonyms such as "run for N hours", "timebox", "keep working until", or "overnight", keeping it below the comprehensive anchor 5.	4 / 5
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	The task-plus-duration trigger carves a clear niche (timeboxed iterative subagent orchestration) that is unlikely to fire for ordinary single-shot tasks. Minor overlap risk remains with generic background-execution or loop-running skills, so it is mostly distinct rather than minimal-conflict.	4 / 5
	Total	15 / 20 Passed

Validation

100%

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 — 16 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

No warnings or errors.

Repository: av/harbor
Path: .agents/skills/timeboxed-iterating/SKILL.md
Commit: e38ae4c

Reviewed: 1 day ago

Table of Contents

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