memory-lifecycle

Manage entity status transitions in Basic Memory: archive completed work, move notes between status folders, update frontmatter, and handle edge cases. Use when marking items complete, archiving old entities, or managing any folder-based status workflow.

Quality

88%

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Securityby

Passed

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Quality

Content

77%Weight 40%Scale 1-3

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

A well-structured, actionable skill body with executable code examples and a clear sequenced workflow including confirmation and revert paths. Its main weaknesses are mild redundancy in the archive-principle and folder-convention sections and a monolithic structure with no progressive disclosure into reference files.

Suggestions

Collapse the three folder-convention example blocks into one generic pattern plus a single concrete example to remove redundancy and tighten the conciseness score.

Move the status-detection signal table or folder-convention reference into a REFERENCES.md file linked from the body, adding one-level-deep progressive disclosure.

Add an explicit verification checkpoint after move_note/edit_note (e.g., re-list the destination folder or re-read frontmatter) to strengthen the workflow's feedback loop for batch operations.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	Mostly efficient with concrete code and a tight table, but the 'Core Principle: Archive, Never Delete' section restates the intro's 'archive, never delete' principle, and the three near-identical folder-convention blocks (entities/, tasks/, [type]/) are repetitive and could be tightened.	2 / 3
Actionability	Provides copy-paste-ready calls — search_notes, move_note, edit_note — with real parameters and identifiers, plus a concrete status-detection table; fully executable guidance rather than pseudocode.	3 / 3
Workflow Clarity	Clear numbered sequence (Find → Move → Update frontmatter → Confirm) with an explicit ordering rationale ('Move first, then update frontmatter'), a confirm checkpoint, and revert/batch error-recovery guidance in edge cases.	3 / 3
Progressive Disclosure	Sections are well-organized with clear headers, but the skill is a monolithic ~180-line SKILL.md with no external references; at this length some reference material (folder conventions, the signal table) could be offloaded, so the simple-skill exemption does not apply.	2 / 3
	Total	10 / 12 Passed

Description

100%Weight 40%Scale 1-3

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 that names concrete capabilities and pairs them with an explicit 'Use when' trigger clause covering natural user phrasings. It is specific, complete, and clearly distinct from neighboring memory skills.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	Lists multiple concrete actions — 'archive completed work, move notes between status folders, update frontmatter, and handle edge cases' — matching the top anchor for naming several specific actions.	3 / 3
Completeness	Explicitly answers both what (the four transition actions) and when (a clear 'Use when...' clause), satisfying the top anchor; not a 2 because the when-trigger is explicit rather than implied.	3 / 3
Trigger Term Quality	'Use when marking items complete, archiving old entities, or managing any folder-based status workflow' provides natural phrasings a user would actually say, with good coverage of trigger variations.	3 / 3
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	The niche — folder-based status workflows in Basic Memory — is specific with distinct triggers ('archiving old entities', 'folder-based status workflow'), making conflict with other skills unlikely.	3 / 3
	Total	12 / 12 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: basicmachines-co/basic-memory
Path: skills/memory-lifecycle/SKILL.md
Commit: cb95e59

Reviewed: 11 days ago

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