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pair

Guided pair-programming mode where Claude teaches rather than solves — asking guiding questions, providing hints, explaining concepts, and reviewing user-written code instead of writing solutions. Use when the user wants to learn while building: says "teach me", "help me understand", "guide me", "walk me through", "mentor me", "don't just give me the answer", "learning mode", or invokes /pair.

Quality

92%

Does it follow best practices?

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SecuritybySnyk

Low

Low-risk findings worth noting

SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

85%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.

A well-structured instructional skill body: the workflow is explicit with feedback paths, templates are copy-paste ready, and detail is correctly deferred to a real, one-level-deep reference file. The main deductions are minor token duplication between the teaching-rules and strictness sections, and a tool mismatch — the body requires `AskUserQuestion` while the frontmatter's allowed-tools omits it.

Suggestions

Resolve the tool mismatch: either add AskUserQuestion to allowed-tools or rewrite Step 1.1 to present the strictness options as plain text, since the current instruction cannot be executed with the declared tools.

Merge "Core Teaching Rules" with the "Strictness Enforcement" section — "Respect strictness" duplicates the boundary already spelled out per-level, and removing it trims tokens without losing information.

Specify how the "claude-pair label" and JIRA ticket context are obtained (which tool or command), or drop that path, since it cannot be discovered with the currently allowed tools.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The body is largely lean — compact tables, short rules, and templates Claude could not infer on its own — but there is minor duplication: "Core Teaching Rules" restates the strictness boundary already enforced in the "Strictness Enforcement" section, and the three techniques are summarized in the body while their details live in guidance-patterns.md. This fits the score-4 anchor (efficient; minor instances that could be trimmed) rather than 5, where every token would earn its place.

4 / 5

Actionability

Concrete, executable guidance throughout: a strictness-level table, ordered context-resolution rules, and copy-paste markdown templates for session start and exit. However, Step 1.1 instructs use of `AskUserQuestion` while the frontmatter allows only Read/Glob/Grep, and the "claude-pair label detected" mechanism is unspecified — small gaps that keep this at the score-4 anchor (mostly executable, minor gaps) rather than 5.

4 / 5

Workflow Clarity

A clearly sequenced three-step workflow (initialization with ordered sub-steps 1.1-1.4, guided session loop, exit summary) with a confirmation checkpoint before the loop starts and explicit error-recovery paths in "Handling Common Situations" (frustrated, partially correct, task too complex). This matches the score-5 anchor's clear sequence with feedback loops; the score-4 anchor's "minor validation gaps" do not apply, and no destructive/batch-operation cap is triggered.

5 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

The SKILL.md body is a clean overview that twice clearly signals [guidance-patterns.md](references/guidance-patterns.md), which exists and is exactly one level deep, containing the appropriately split-out teaching techniques, task patterns, and complexity calibration. This matches the score-5 anchor (clear overview with well-signaled one-level-deep references, content appropriately split).

5 / 5

Total

18

/

20

Passed

Description

96%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.

An excellent description: third-person voice, concrete capability verbs, and an explicit Use-when clause with a rich set of natural trigger phrases. The only weakness is mild overlap risk from generic phrases like "walk me through" that users might say when they merely want an explanation rather than a guided learning session.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

"asking guiding questions, providing hints, explaining concepts, and reviewing user-written code instead of writing solutions" lists four concrete, domain-specific actions that comprehensively cover the skill's behavior. This matches the score-5 anchor (multiple specific concrete actions, comprehensive coverage) rather than 4, since no meaningful capability gap remains.

5 / 5

Completeness

Explicitly answers both "what" ("Guided pair-programming mode where Claude teaches rather than solves...") and "when" ("Use when the user wants to learn while building: says...") with concrete trigger phrases. This mirrors the score-5 anchor example structure exactly; the score-4 anchor's "when could be more explicit" caveat does not apply.

5 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

The trigger list "teach me", "help me understand", "guide me", "walk me through", "mentor me", "don't just give me the answer", "learning mode", and "/pair" covers the natural phrases a user would actually say, including synonyms and the slash command. Matches the comprehensive coverage of the score-5 anchor; no file extensions exist for this behavioral domain to be missing.

5 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

Triggers like "/pair", "learning mode", "mentor me", and "don't just give me the answer" establish a clear niche, but "walk me through" and "help me understand" are common phrases that could also fire on ordinary explanation requests, creating minor overlap risk with closely related skills. This fits the score-4 anchor (mostly distinct; minor overlap risk); score 5 would require near-zero overlap, and score 3 would understate the distinct mode framing.

4 / 5

Total

19

/

20

Passed

Validation

100%

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

ericjohnolson/tessl-test

Path

plugins/crafter/skills/pair/SKILL.md

Reviewed

Table of Contents

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