exa-rate-limits
Implement Exa rate limiting, exponential backoff, and request queuing. Use when handling 429 errors, implementing retry logic, or optimizing API request throughput for Exa. Trigger with phrases like "exa rate limit", "exa throttling", "exa 429", "exa retry", "exa backoff", "exa QPS".
84
82%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
—
No eval scenarios have been run
Passed
No known issues
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 a well-crafted skill description that clearly defines its scope (Exa API rate limiting and retry logic), provides explicit 'Use when' guidance with concrete scenarios, and includes a comprehensive set of natural trigger terms. It uses proper third-person voice and is concise without being vague. The Exa-specific qualifier throughout ensures minimal conflict risk with other skills.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Lists multiple specific concrete actions: 'rate limiting', 'exponential backoff', and 'request queuing'. These are distinct, well-defined technical capabilities. | 3 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both 'what' (implement rate limiting, exponential backoff, request queuing) and 'when' (handling 429 errors, implementing retry logic, optimizing API request throughput) with explicit trigger phrases. | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Excellent coverage of natural trigger terms including 'exa rate limit', 'exa throttling', 'exa 429', 'exa retry', 'exa backoff', 'exa QPS'. These are terms users would naturally use when encountering these issues. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Highly distinctive due to the 'Exa' qualifier on all triggers and the specific focus on rate limiting/backoff patterns for the Exa API. Unlikely to conflict with generic retry or rate limiting skills. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 12 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
64%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, actionable skill with executable TypeScript examples covering multiple rate-limiting strategies for the Exa API. Its main weaknesses are verbosity (four distinct patterns where two would suffice for most use cases) and missing validation/error-recovery steps in the batch processing workflow. The content would benefit from splitting advanced patterns into separate files and adding explicit checkpoints for batch operations.
Suggestions
Add validation checkpoints to the batch processing workflow: verify result counts, handle partial failures, and provide a recovery mechanism for interrupted batch jobs.
Move the AdaptiveRateLimiter (Step 3) and batch processing (Step 4) into separate referenced files to keep SKILL.md focused on the core backoff + queue pattern.
Remove the Prerequisites section — Claude already understands async/await and SDK installation.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | The content is mostly efficient with good code examples, but includes some unnecessary elements: the Prerequisites section ('Understanding of async/await patterns' is something Claude knows), the rate limit table repeating '10' and 'Same pool' four times, and Step 3 (AdaptiveRateLimiter) adds significant length for a pattern that overlaps with the backoff + queue already covered. The error handling table is useful but partially redundant with inline comments. | 2 / 3 |
Actionability | All code examples are fully executable TypeScript with proper imports, concrete configurations, and copy-paste ready patterns. The examples cover the full spectrum from simple retry wrapper to advanced adaptive rate limiting and batch processing, with specific Exa SDK usage throughout. | 3 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | The steps are clearly sequenced and build on each other (backoff → queue → adaptive → batch), but there are no explicit validation checkpoints. For batch operations that could fail partway through, there's no guidance on verifying results, handling partial failures, or recovering state. The batch processing function silently continues without checking for errors in individual batches. | 2 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | The content is well-structured with clear headers and a logical progression, but it's quite long (~150 lines of code) with no bundle files to offload advanced patterns. The AdaptiveRateLimiter class and batch processing could be in separate referenced files. The reference to 'exa-security-basics' is a good cross-reference, but the main content is monolithic. | 2 / 3 |
Total | 9 / 12 Passed |
Validation
81%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 9 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
| Criteria | Description | Result |
|---|---|---|
allowed_tools_field | 'allowed-tools' contains unusual tool name(s) | Warning |
frontmatter_unknown_keys | Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata | Warning |
Total | 9 / 11 Passed | |
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