Conciseness

The body is lean and telegraphic across all nine sections — e.g., "Fail fast: stop at the first failed required gate" — with no re-teaching of concepts Claude already knows; every Gotcha is harness-specific and earns its place. The only near-redundancy is the one-line "When to use" restating the frontmatter description, which is structural convention rather than the over-explanation of anchor 4.

Actionability

Concrete anchors exist — the Deliverables section names artifact fields ("schema_version, stage, status, evidence_refs, blocked_by, and next_stage") and exact status vocabulary ("pass, fail, blocked, or not_checked") — but the operational core stays abstract: "Run the smallest relevant local check for changed files" and "run plugin validation and SDK proof commands from the repository wrapper" name no actual commands, and no example stage-result artifact is given. Above anchor 2 (more than high-level hints), below anchor 4 (missing executable specifics).

Workflow Clarity

The five-step Procedure is clearly sequenced, with an explicit fail-fast checkpoint ("stop at the first failed required gate... do not proceed to downstream stages until the failure is resolved or explicitly waived") and error-recovery routing in Failure modes ("blocker with the smallest recovery step"). Not 5 because the validation step itself is generic — which check to run and what constitutes a gate is never specified, leaving a minor validation gap.

Progressive Disclosure

A lean ~55-line overview body with clear section headers and a References section pointing one level deep to four labeled files (contract, evals, task profile, source context), all verified to exist with real content rather than nested pointer stubs. References are well-signaled with purpose labels and navigation is easy, matching the anchor-5 structure.

Specificity

Enumerates several concrete deliverables — "exact commands, outcomes, artifact paths, untested lanes, and residual risk" — but describes a single action ("Generate closure proof") plus its contents, and "closure proof"/"untested lanes" are internal jargon, falling short of anchor 5's comprehensive coverage of distinct concrete actions. It is well above anchor 3's 1-2 concrete actions.

Completeness

Explicitly answers both: what ("Generate closure proof with exact commands, outcomes, artifact paths, untested lanes, and residual risk") and when ("Use when work and review need a receipt before closeout, release, tracker movement, or handoff") with concrete trigger phrases. This matches the anchor-5 pattern; the when-clause is fully explicit, so it exceeds anchor 4.

Trigger Term Quality

"closeout, release, tracker movement, or handoff" plus "receipt" and "residual risk" are natural phrases a target user would say, giving good keyword coverage. Not 5 because common synonyms are missing (e.g., "signoff", "validation report", "release notes") and no variations of the core request are offered; not 3 because coverage is good rather than partial.

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

"closure proof" and "receipt before closeout" carve a distinct niche with domain-specific triggers, but "release" and "handoff" are broad terms that could overlap with adjacent lifecycle or reporting skills — mostly distinct with minor overlap risk. Not 5 (some generic trigger words remain); clearly above anchor 3's overlap-with-similar-skills level.