Conciseness

The body re-teaches nothing Claude already knows and pushes ~800 lines of criteria into reference files, keeping every section operational ("Not This" bullets each draw a boundary). Not 5 due to minor trimmable material: the dense Step 2 observability paragraph ("Distinguish application payload, host/interface traffic and provider billing by direction, time window and coverage") and the intro's preview of the two early-exit outcomes that the Stops section fully restates; not 3 because padding is the exception, not the norm.

Actionability

Concrete directive guidance throughout: "give a verdict per axis: `pass` / `fail` (name the failure mode) / `unknown` (needs probe)", "Scan for surfaces that cannot be patched after release: telemetry/events, field and export formats, external contracts", and a fully enumerated output shape with three exact decision branches. Not 5 because the body defers the actual filter criteria to references/decision-axes.md and never shows a worked example of a filled-out candidate table or short output; not 3 because what is written is specific and executable, not vague direction.

Workflow Clarity

Steps 0–7 are explicitly sequenced, each ending in a Checkpoint with corrective feedback ("Business result written as 'tests pass' → that's a proxy metric. Rewrite."), plus a retry/termination clause ("max two attempts across methods per candidate") and an error-recovery diagnosis branch ("Report which axis killed which candidate, and whether the axis was wrong or the candidate set incomplete"). Matches the explicit-validation-with-feedback-loops anchor; the destructive/batch cap does not apply since the skill's verification posture is explicit in Step 7.

Progressive Disclosure

All five references/ files are real, each is linked from the body with a "Read when" navigation table, no reference points to another (one level deep), and both anchored deep-links (delegation-contract.md#agent-orchestration, #resolved-scope-boundaries) resolve to actual section headers. The ~200-line body keeps the protocol while decision-axes/scoped-criteria/rejection-modes carry the bulk — an appropriately split, easy-to-navigate structure.

Specificity

"Gated checklist to choose or review a library, framework, storage, data format, model, build-vs-buy or architecture" plus "Compare candidates and trade-offs; select within authorization or return user-owned choices" lists several concrete third-person actions. Not 5 because "gated checklist" and "select within authorization" stay at process altitude — the probing/verification half of the skill is only implied, leaving minor coverage gaps; not 3 because it goes well beyond 1–2 actions.

Completeness

Explicitly answers both: what ("Gated checklist to choose or review… Compare candidates and trade-offs; select within authorization or return user-owned choices") and when ("Use for … and before committing to one") with concrete trigger phrases, matching the top anchor. Not 4 because the "when" clause is not merely present but explicit, multi-trigger, and augmented by a routing boundary ("Research reports → deep-research").

Trigger Term Quality

"Use for 用哪个 / 选什么框架 / 要不要自建 / A 还是 B / 这个方案行不行 and before committing to one" gives natural user phrasings with synonym variation across the choose/build/review space. Not 5 because English natural equivalents ("which library should I use", "X vs Y", "should we build or buy") are largely absent beyond "build-vs-buy" and "before committing to one"; not 3 because coverage is far richer than one or two generic keywords.

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

Clear niche (technology selection via a gated filter checklist) with distinct triggers, and the nearest neighboring skill is explicitly disambiguated: "Research reports → deep-research." Not 4 because the one closely related skill is actively routed away rather than merely distinguishable, leaving minimal conflict risk.