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writing-clearly-and-concisely

Use when writing prose humans will read—documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text. Applies Strunk's timeless rules for clearer, stronger, more professional writing.

80

1.01x
Quality

69%

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

96%

1.01x

Average score across 3 eval scenarios

SecuritybySnyk

Passed

No known issues

Fix and improve this skill with Tessl

tessl review fix ./writing-clearly-and-concisely/SKILL.md
SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

57%

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

This skill has strong progressive disclosure with well-organized references to supporting files, and the AI patterns section adds genuine value. However, it lacks concrete before/after examples that would make the guidance truly actionable, and some sections could be tightened. The enumerated Strunk rules without examples feel like a reference dump rather than actionable instruction.

Suggestions

Add 2-3 concrete before/after examples showing a weak sentence transformed using the key rules (active voice, omit needless words, positive form) — this would significantly boost actionability.

Trim the 'When to Use This Skill' section to a single sentence — Claude can infer when to write clearly without a bullet list of every prose context.

Add an explicit editing workflow: draft → apply key rules → check for AI patterns → revise, with a brief validation step like 'Re-read each sentence and ask: can I cut any words without losing meaning?'

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

Generally efficient but includes some unnecessary framing ('William Strunk Jr.'s *The Elements of Style* (1918) teaches you to write clearly and cut ruthlessly') and the 'When to Use This Skill' section over-explains with a bullet list of obvious contexts plus a bold summary line. The enumerated rules list is borderline — useful as a reference but takes significant space for content Claude likely knows.

2 / 3

Actionability

Provides concrete lists of patterns to avoid and rules to follow, but lacks executable examples — no before/after rewrites, no concrete input→output demonstrations of applying the rules. The guidance is specific enough to act on but would benefit greatly from worked examples showing transformations.

2 / 3

Workflow Clarity

The 'Limited Context Strategy' provides a clear 3-step workflow for subagent delegation, which is good. However, the overall writing workflow is implicit — there's no clear sequence like 'draft → check against rules → revise → verify.' For a skill about editing prose, a more explicit edit-validate loop would strengthen this.

2 / 3

Progressive Disclosure

Excellent structure with a clear overview, well-signaled one-level-deep references via the table of section files with token counts, and a clear recommendation for which file to load first. The navigation is easy and the content is appropriately split between the overview and reference files.

3 / 3

Total

9

/

12

Passed

Description

82%

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 solid description with a clear 'Use when' clause and good trigger term coverage across multiple content types. Its main weakness is that the actual capabilities are described abstractly ('Applies Strunk's timeless rules') rather than listing specific concrete actions the skill performs. The broad scope also creates some overlap risk with other writing-related skills.

Suggestions

Add specific concrete actions the skill performs, e.g., 'Eliminates passive voice, removes unnecessary words, tightens sentence structure, enforces parallel construction.'

Narrow the distinctiveness by specifying what makes this different from general editing or style skills, e.g., 'Focuses on conciseness and clarity following Strunk & White's Elements of Style, not tone or voice adjustments.'

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

The description names the domain (prose writing) and lists several types of content (documentation, commit messages, error messages, etc.), but the actual actions are vague—'Applies Strunk's timeless rules' doesn't specify concrete actions like 'removes passive voice, eliminates unnecessary words, tightens sentence structure.'

2 / 3

Completeness

Explicitly answers both 'what' (applies Strunk's rules for clearer, stronger, more professional writing) and 'when' (opens with 'Use when writing prose humans will read' followed by specific content types). The 'Use when...' clause is present and clear.

3 / 3

Trigger Term Quality

Includes strong natural trigger terms users would actually say: 'documentation', 'commit messages', 'error messages', 'explanations', 'reports', 'UI text', 'writing', 'prose'. These cover a good range of common variations.

3 / 3

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

While 'Strunk's rules' provides some distinctiveness, the broad scope of 'writing prose humans will read' could overlap with other writing, editing, or style guide skills. The wide range of content types (documentation, commit messages, UI text) increases potential conflict with more specialized skills.

2 / 3

Total

10

/

12

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
joshuadavidthomas/agent-skills
Reviewed

Table of Contents

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