managing-database-sharding

Process use when you need to work with database sharding. This skill provides horizontal sharding strategies with comprehensive guidance and automation. Trigger with phrases like "implement sharding", "shard database", or "distribute data".

Quality

—

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

—

No eval scenarios have been run

Securityby

Passed

No known issues

Quality

Content

65%

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

The content is highly actionable with concrete commands and specific tooling, but it over-explains some general database concepts and lacks explicit feedback loops for its destructive batch operations. It also ignores its own bundle files, which are incompletely populated.

Suggestions

Tighten or remove the general shard-key and strategy explanations Claude already knows, keeping only the decision guidance.

Add explicit inline feedback loops for the migration step, e.g. 'Verify source and destination row counts; if they differ, abort and re-run the batch before deleting source data.'

Either reference the bundled scripts from the Instructions/Output sections or remove the scripts/README.md entries for files that do not exist (and fix init_sharding.py's time import / make it sharding-specific).

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The body is mostly efficient with concrete SQL throughout, but it explains concepts Claude already knows (e.g. 'A good shard key has high cardinality, even distribution, and appears in most queries' and the per-strategy rationales) that could be tightened.	2 / 3
Actionability	It provides executable, copy-paste-ready SQL commands, named tools (Citus, vitess, ProxySQL, mongos), concrete CLI calls (sh.enableSharding(), sh.shardCollection()), and specific numeric thresholds (10,000-50,000 row batches, 20% skew alert).	3 / 3
Workflow Clarity	The 10 steps are clearly sequenced and include some verification (checksums, row-count matches), but there are no explicit validate->fix->retry feedback loops for the destructive batch migration, which the rubric caps at 2 for database/batch operations.	2 / 3
Progressive Disclosure	Sections are well organized, but the body never references the bundled scripts/references/assets directories, and the bundle itself is misleading (scripts/README.md lists rebalance_shards.py, cross_shard_query.py, and validate_sharding_config.py that do not exist).	2 / 3
	Total	9 / 12 Passed

Description

62%

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 has strong trigger terms and a clear niche, but its capability statement is vague and padded and the opening phrasing is malformed. The second-person trigger clause also costs it specificity per the rubric.

Suggestions

Replace the garbled opening with a concrete third-person action list, e.g. 'Designs shard keys, deploys shard topology across PostgreSQL/MySQL/MongoDB, migrates data, and monitors shard balance.'

Remove buzzword filler ('comprehensive guidance and automation') in favor of the specific actions the skill performs.

Rephrase the trigger clause in third person to avoid the second-person penalty, e.g. 'Use when implementing sharding, sharding a database, or distributing data across nodes.'

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	The description only names the domain and a vague action ('provides horizontal sharding strategies with comprehensive guidance and automation') rather than listing concrete actions; the second-person 'use when you need' triggers the rubric's -1 specificity penalty, dropping it from a base of 2 to 1.	1 / 3
Completeness	Explicit trigger guidance is present ('use when you need to work with database sharding' plus 'Trigger with phrases like...'), so it is not capped, but the 'what' is buzzwordy/vague and the opening 'Process use when' is garbled, so it does not clearly answer both what and when for a 3.	2 / 3
Trigger Term Quality	It supplies several natural trigger phrases a user would say — 'implement sharding', 'shard database', 'distribute data' — giving good coverage of common variations.	3 / 3
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	Database sharding is a clear niche with distinct triggers unlikely to conflict with other skills.	3 / 3
	Total	9 / 12 Passed

Validation

87%

Warnings & errors only

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

Validation — 14 / 16 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	14 / 16 Passed

Repository: jeremylongshore/claude-code-plugins-plus-skills
Commit: 6e3a65f

Reviewed: 2 days ago

Table of Contents

Discovery Implementation Validation

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