arc-region-switch

Answers questions about Amazon Application Recovery Controller (ARC) Region switch including architecture, plans, execution blocks, workflows, triggers, active/active vs active/passive, cross-account support, recovery time, dashboards, and customer positioning. Applicable when users ask about ARC Region switch adoption, design, or troubleshooting.

Quality

85%

Does it follow best practices?

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Securityby

Low

Low-risk findings worth noting

Quality

Content

85%

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

A well-structured expert skill body: actionable, clearly workflowed, and properly split across two well-signaled reference files. Its only notable weakness is conciseness, driven by duplicated IAM/security guidance across sections.

Suggestions

Consolidate the cross-account IAM least-privilege guidance into a single section (Security Considerations) and reference it from 'Cross-Account Support' rather than restating the condition keys and ARN-scoping advice twice.

Reduce repetition of the regional-endpoint rule — it appears in 'Critical Warnings' and again in 'Troubleshooting'; consider stating it once and cross-referencing.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The body is expert-level and avoids explaining basic AWS concepts Claude knows, but it runs ~190 lines and repeats content — cross-account IAM guidance (condition keys, least-privilege ARN scoping) appears in both 'Cross-Account Support' and 'Security Considerations', and the doc-link/start-plan-execution reminders recur — so it could be tightened.	2 / 3
Actionability	As an instruction/knowledge skill it gives concrete, specific guidance: named APIs ('start-plan-execution'), exact condition keys ('aws:SourceArn', 'aws:SourceAccount', 'sts:ExternalId'), specific S3 hardening steps, and real documentation URLs — actionable without being pseudocode.	3 / 3
Workflow Clarity	The 'Workflow' section gives a clear 4-step sequence with an 'Always validate' checklist (terminology, doc links, positioning), and troubleshooting entries pair symptom with fix, providing explicit validation guidance for an advisory workflow.	3 / 3
Progressive Disclosure	SKILL.md serves as an overview and cleanly offloads depth to two real one-level-deep, clearly signaled references — [Positioning](references/positioning.md) and [Documentation Links](references/doc-links.md), both confirmed present in ./references/ — with no nested-reference chains.	3 / 3
	Total	11 / 12 Passed

Description

85%

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 strong, third-person description with explicit what-and-when structure and clear niche differentiation. Its main weakness is trigger-term coverage, which leans on the product name rather than the broader vocabulary (failover, switchover, DR) users often say.

Suggestions

Add common user terms to the trigger clause — e.g. 'Use when users ask about cross-Region failover, switchover, or disaster recovery (DR) for multi-Region workloads' — so it matches natural phrasings beyond the product name.

Consider trimming the long capability list slightly; the enumerations of dashboards and customer positioning add length without proportional trigger value.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	The description enumerates many concrete capabilities — 'architecture, plans, execution blocks, workflows, triggers, active/active vs active/passive, cross-account support, recovery time, dashboards, and customer positioning' — using third-person voice ('Answers questions').	3 / 3
Completeness	It answers both what ('Answers questions about...') and when ('Applicable when users ask about ARC Region switch adoption, design, or troubleshooting') with an explicit trigger clause.	3 / 3
Trigger Term Quality	It includes the natural product phrase 'ARC Region switch adoption, design, or troubleshooting' but relies heavily on the product name and omits common user phrasings like failover, switchover, or disaster recovery (DR).	2 / 3
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	The narrow product-specific scope (ARC Region switch) with distinct triggers makes it unlikely to fire for unrelated skills.	3 / 3
	Total	11 / 12 Passed

Validation

93%

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 — 15 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

Criteria	Description	Result
frontmatter_unknown_keys	Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata	Warning

	Total	15 / 16 Passed

Repository: aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws
Path: skills/specialized-skills/resilience-skills/arc-region-switch/SKILL.md
Commit: 222ce56

Reviewed: 3 days ago

Table of Contents

Discovery Implementation Validation

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