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planning-and-task-breakdown

Breaks work into ordered tasks. Use when you have a spec or clear requirements and need to break work into implementable tasks. Use when a task feels too large to start, when you need to estimate scope, or when parallel work is possible.

58

Quality

66%

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tessl review fix ./skills/planning-and-task-breakdown/SKILL.md

The canonical home for this skill is planning-and-task-breakdown in addyosmani/agent-skills

SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

70%Scale 1-5

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

This is a solid planning skill with excellent workflow clarity and good actionability through concrete templates and examples. Its main weaknesses are moderate verbosity (the 'Common Rationalizations' table and some motivational content add little value for Claude) and a monolithic structure that could benefit from splitting reference material into separate files. The core planning process is well-sequenced with appropriate validation checkpoints.

Suggestions

Remove the 'Common Rationalizations' table entirely — it explains why planning matters, which Claude already understands. This saves ~10 lines of tokens.

Extract the Plan Document Template and Task Sizing Guidelines into separate reference files (e.g., references/plan-template.md, references/task-sizing.md) to improve progressive disclosure.

Trim the 'Red Flags' section — most items are the inverse of guidance already given in the workflow steps, making them redundant.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The skill contains useful content but is noticeably padded in places. The 'Common Rationalizations' table explains why planning matters — something Claude already understands. The 'When to Use' / 'When NOT to use' section and 'Red Flags' section overlap with guidance already implicit in the process steps. The dependency graph ASCII art and vertical vs horizontal slicing examples are valuable but could be more compact.

3 / 5

Actionability

The skill provides concrete templates, specific file paths (tasks/plan.md, tasks/todo.md), a detailed task structure with markdown format, and clear examples of vertical slicing. However, it lacks executable code — the guidance is instruction-based rather than code-based, which is appropriate for a planning skill. Minor gap: no concrete example of a completed plan.md for a real scenario.

4 / 5

Workflow Clarity

The 5-step process is clearly sequenced with explicit validation checkpoints after every 2-3 tasks. Step 5 specifically addresses ordering and checkpoints. The verification section at the end provides a final checklist before proceeding to implementation. Feedback loops are present (checkpoint → review → proceed pattern). The plan template itself embeds checkpoint steps between phases.

5 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

The skill references `references/definition-of-done.md` in the 'See Also' section, but no bundle files are provided, so this reference is unverifiable. The content is fairly long (~200 lines) and could benefit from splitting — the plan template, task sizing guidelines, and parallelization guidance could be separate reference files. Everything is inlined in a single document with reasonable section headers but no external structure.

3 / 5

Total

15

/

20

Passed

Description

62%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.

The description excels at completeness with multiple well-defined 'Use when' trigger scenarios, but falls short on specificity—it describes only one vague action ('breaks work into ordered tasks') without detailing concrete capabilities. Trigger term coverage is moderate, missing many natural synonyms users might employ when seeking task decomposition help.

Suggestions

Add specific concrete actions beyond 'breaks work into ordered tasks', such as 'creates dependency graphs, generates time estimates per subtask, identifies parallelizable work streams, produces ordered implementation plans'.

Include more natural trigger terms and synonyms like 'plan', 'breakdown', 'decompose', 'project planning', 'task list', 'subtasks', 'work items', or 'roadmap' to improve discoverability.

Add distinguishing details that separate this from generic planning or project management skills, such as specifying the output format or the type of work it handles (e.g., software development tasks, engineering projects).

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

The description names the domain (breaking work into tasks) but the actions are minimal and generic. 'Breaks work into ordered tasks' is a single vague action without concrete details like 'creates dependency graphs', 'generates subtask estimates', or 'identifies parallelizable work streams'.

2 / 5

Completeness

Clearly answers both 'what' (breaks work into ordered tasks) and 'when' with multiple explicit trigger scenarios: having a spec/requirements, work feeling too large, needing scope estimation, or when parallel work is possible. The 'Use when' clauses are concrete and actionable.

5 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

Includes some relevant terms like 'spec', 'requirements', 'estimate scope', 'parallel work', and 'tasks', but misses natural user phrases like 'plan', 'breakdown', 'decompose', 'project planning', 'task list', 'subtasks', 'work items', or 'roadmap'.

3 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

The description is somewhat specific to task decomposition/planning, but 'breaks work into tasks' could overlap with project management skills, sprint planning skills, or general planning/organization skills. The triggers like 'too large to start' and 'estimate scope' help but are still fairly broad.

3 / 5

Total

13

/

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.

Validation11 / 11 Passed

Validation for skill structure

No warnings or errors.

Repository
finlay611/agent-skills
Reviewed

Table of Contents

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