add-skill

Create new joelclaw skills with the idiomatic process — repo-canonical, symlinked, git-tracked, slogged. Triggers on 'add a skill', 'create skill', 'new skill', 'canonical skill', 'make a skill for', or any request to formalize a process or domain into a reusable skill.

Quality

83%

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

—

No eval scenarios have been run

Securityby

Passed

No known issues

Quality

Content

77%

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

This is a strong, actionable skill with excellent workflow clarity and concrete executable commands throughout. The 6-step process is well-sequenced with important gotchas and safety rules clearly documented. Minor weaknesses include some verbosity that could be trimmed and the opportunity to split the longer sections (template, external installs, Codex metadata) into reference files for better progressive disclosure.

Suggestions

Consider moving the SKILL.md template into a references/template.md file and linking to it, keeping only a brief description inline.

The 'Installing External Skill Packs' and 'Codex Desktop Metadata' sections could be split into separate reference files to keep the main SKILL.md focused on the core create-skill workflow.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	Generally efficient but includes some unnecessary guidance like 'Write for another Claude instance' explanations and the 'stunned mullet' metaphor. The SKILL.md template section is somewhat verbose with inline commentary that could be trimmed, though most content earns its place as non-obvious procedural knowledge.	2 / 3
Actionability	Every step has concrete, copy-paste-ready bash commands with clear placeholders. The symlink commands, slog format, git commit format, and external install commands are all fully executable. The directory structure examples are specific and complete.	3 / 3
Workflow Clarity	The 6-step process is clearly sequenced and logically ordered (create → write → reference → symlink → slog → commit). The Key Rules section serves as validation guidance, explicitly calling out the directory name mismatch issue that causes conflicts, and the destructive 'cat > symlink' gotcha. The updating workflow is also clearly documented.	3 / 3
Progressive Disclosure	The content is well-structured with clear sections, but it's a fairly long single file that could benefit from splitting the SKILL.md template and external skill pack installation into separate reference files. No bundle files are provided despite the skill referencing optional references/ and scripts/ directories, though the skill itself may not need them.	2 / 3
	Total	10 / 12 Passed

Description

89%

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 description excels at completeness and distinctiveness, with strong explicit trigger terms and a clear 'when' clause. Its main weakness is that the 'what' portion relies on jargon ('repo-canonical, symlinked, git-tracked, slogged') rather than spelling out concrete actions, which limits specificity for someone unfamiliar with the workflow.

Suggestions

Replace or supplement jargon terms ('repo-canonical, symlinked, git-tracked, slogged') with concrete action descriptions, e.g., 'Creates the skill markdown file, symlinks it into the skills directory, commits it to git, and logs the creation in the slog.'

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	It names the domain (creating joelclaw skills) and mentions some attributes ('repo-canonical, symlinked, git-tracked, slogged'), but these are jargon-heavy descriptors rather than concrete actions. The actual steps or actions involved in skill creation are not enumerated.	2 / 3
Completeness	Clearly answers both 'what' (create new joelclaw skills with the idiomatic process) and 'when' (explicit 'Triggers on...' clause with multiple trigger phrases and a broader catch-all condition).	3 / 3
Trigger Term Quality	Excellent explicit trigger terms listed: 'add a skill', 'create skill', 'new skill', 'canonical skill', 'make a skill for', plus the broader 'formalize a process or domain into a reusable skill'. These are natural phrases a user would say.	3 / 3
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	Highly distinctive — it's specifically about creating 'joelclaw skills' with a particular workflow. The trigger terms are narrowly scoped to skill creation requests, making conflicts with other skills unlikely.	3 / 3
	Total	11 / 12 Passed

Validation

90%

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 — 10 / 11 Passed

Validation for skill structure

Criteria	Description	Result
frontmatter_unknown_keys	Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata	Warning

	Total	10 / 11 Passed

Repository: joelhooks/joelclaw
Commit: 2ca3686

Reviewed: 10 days ago

Table of Contents

Discovery Implementation Validation

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