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monitoring-background-jobs

Monitors CockroachDB background job health by identifying failed, paused, and long-running jobs using SHOW JOBS and SHOW AUTOMATIC JOBS. Surfaces schema changes, backups/restores, automatic statistics collection, and SQL stats compaction jobs without DB Console access. Use when investigating schema change delays, failed backups, or automatic job issues.

86

1.95x
Quality

81%

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

94%

1.95x

Average score across 3 eval scenarios

SecuritybySnyk

Passed

No known issues

SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Discovery

100%

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

This is an excellent skill description that clearly defines its scope (CockroachDB background job health monitoring), lists specific capabilities and SQL commands used, and provides explicit trigger guidance. It uses proper third-person voice throughout and includes natural keywords that users investigating CockroachDB job issues would use.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

Lists multiple specific concrete actions: identifying failed/paused/long-running jobs, surfacing schema changes, backups/restores, automatic statistics collection, and SQL stats compaction jobs. Also specifies the SQL commands used (SHOW JOBS, SHOW AUTOMATIC JOBS).

3 / 3

Completeness

Clearly answers both 'what' (monitors CockroachDB background job health by identifying failed/paused/long-running jobs, surfaces various job types) and 'when' (explicit 'Use when investigating schema change delays, failed backups, or automatic job issues').

3 / 3

Trigger Term Quality

Includes strong natural trigger terms users would say: 'CockroachDB', 'failed', 'paused', 'long-running jobs', 'schema change delays', 'failed backups', 'automatic job issues', 'SHOW JOBS', 'SHOW AUTOMATIC JOBS', 'DB Console'. Good coverage of both technical and natural language terms.

3 / 3

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

Highly distinctive with a clear niche: CockroachDB job monitoring specifically. The combination of CockroachDB, SHOW JOBS, and specific job types like backups/schema changes makes it very unlikely to conflict with other skills.

3 / 3

Total

12

/

12

Passed

Implementation

62%

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

This skill provides highly actionable, executable SQL queries with excellent workflow clarity and safety considerations for CockroachDB job monitoring. However, it is significantly over-verbose, with extensive inline reference material (status tables, concept explanations, common error patterns) that should either be in referenced files or trimmed entirely given Claude's existing knowledge. The content would be roughly half its current length if it assumed Claude's competence with database concepts.

Suggestions

Move the 'Core Concepts' section (jobs vs statements, status values table, job types table) into the referenced files (job-types.md, job-states.md) and keep only a 1-2 line summary in SKILL.md

Remove explanations of obvious concepts like what 'failed' status means, what 'permission denied' errors indicate, and why backups might fail due to disk space - Claude knows these

Consolidate the 7 diagnostic queries by removing redundant column explanations and 'Key columns' sections - the SQL column names are self-documenting

Eliminate repeated MVCC GC explanations (appears in Core Concepts, Query 4, Workflow 1, Troubleshooting, and Key Considerations) - explain once and reference

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The skill is extremely verbose at ~400+ lines. It over-explains concepts Claude already knows (what PDFs are, what 'failed' status means, what 'permission denied' errors indicate), includes extensive tables defining obvious status values, and repeats information across sections (e.g., MVCC GC explanation appears in multiple places). The 'Core Concepts' section explaining jobs vs statements and status values is largely unnecessary padding.

1 / 3

Actionability

All queries are fully executable SQL with proper CTE syntax for CockroachDB's SHOW JOBS interface. Key columns are explained, thresholds are customizable, and job control commands are concrete. The queries are copy-paste ready with appropriate LIMIT clauses and time window filters.

3 / 3

Workflow Clarity

Workflows are clearly sequenced with numbered steps, include interpretation guidance at each stage, and have explicit decision points (e.g., 'If running_status = waiting for MVCC GC: Normal... If long-running with low fraction_completed: Check for contention'). Safety considerations include explicit validation checkpoints before destructive operations like CANCEL JOB, with clear warnings about risks by job type.

3 / 3

Progressive Disclosure

The skill references four bundle files (permissions.md, job-states.md, job-types.md, sql-query-variations.md) and related skills, which is good structure. However, no bundle files were provided, and the main SKILL.md contains substantial content that should be in reference files (e.g., the full job status values table, the job types table, common failure patterns). The core concepts section is essentially inline reference material that bloats the main file.

2 / 3

Total

9

/

12

Passed

Validation

90%

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

Validation10 / 11 Passed

Validation for skill structure

CriteriaDescriptionResult

skill_md_line_count

SKILL.md is long (526 lines); consider splitting into references/ and linking

Warning

Total

10

/

11

Passed

Repository
cockroachlabs/cockroachdb-skills
Reviewed

Table of Contents

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