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skill-authoring

Guidelines for writing Agent Skills that comply with the agentskills.io specification. WHEN: "create a skill", "new skill", "write a skill", "skill template", "skill structure", "review skill", "skill PR", "skill compliance", "SKILL.md format", "skill frontmatter", "skill best practices".

67

Quality

84%

Does it follow best practices?

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SecuritybySnyk

Passed

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SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

78%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

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

A well-structured, lean instruction skill that appropriately pushes detail into a verified, clearly indexed reference bundle with excellent progressive disclosure. The remaining gaps are minor: some duplicated statements, validation commands that reference a scripts/ directory absent from the bundle, and an authoring process presented as rules rather than a sequenced workflow.

Suggestions

Consolidate the duplicated guidance: state the JIT 'references load only when explicitly linked' rule once (the Reference Loading section) and remove its repetition in Progressive Disclosure, and link REFERENCE-LOADING.md once instead of in both the Reference Loading section and the Reference Documentation list.

Make the validation commands self-contained: either note where the scripts/ package lives or inline a fallback (e.g., a grep/ls-based link-check) so the integrity checks are executable in any checkout of the skill.

Add a brief numbered authoring sequence (draft frontmatter -> write lean SKILL.md -> split detail into references -> run validation checks) so the constraints and checklist hang together as an explicit workflow with validation checkpoints.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The body is lean (~413 words, bullet constraints, no explanation of concepts Claude already knows), but contains minor duplication: the JIT 'explicitly linked' rule is stated in both the Progressive Disclosure and Reference Loading sections, REFERENCE-LOADING.md is linked twice, and frontmatter constraints are restated in Structure. This matches 'efficient; minor instances of over-explanation that could be trimmed' rather than the every-token-earns-its-place anchor.

4 / 5

Actionability

Concrete, executable guidance dominates: exact character/word/token limits, exact link syntax ("[text](references/file.md)"), and exact commands ("cd scripts; npm run references; npm run tokens -- check"). However, those npm commands target a scripts/ directory that does not exist in this bundle, and no example of a well-formed frontmatter is shown inline — minor gaps matching 'mostly executable guidance; concrete code or commands with minor gaps' rather than fully copy-paste-ready.

4 / 5

Workflow Clarity

The Validation section provides executable commands plus a numbered integrity checklist with remediation guidance ('References under 1000 tokens (split if exceeded)'), giving the review/authoring process real checkpoints. It falls short of the top anchor because the authoring process itself is presented as unsequenced rules rather than an explicit step order with error-recovery loops; it is above the level-3 anchor because checkpoints and remediation are present, not missing.

4 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

SKILL.md is a lean overview with a dedicated Reference Documentation section indexing every reference with a one-line description; all linked files (guidelines/README.md, guidelines/frontmatter.md, token-budgets.md, REFERENCE-LOADING.md, CHECKLIST.md, validation/README.md) exist in the bundle, and category READMEs serve as well-signaled one-hop indexes to their siblings. Content is appropriately split, links target files not folders, and navigation is easy — matching the clear-overview anchor.

5 / 5

Total

17

/

20

Passed

Description

86%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

A strong description with an explicit WHAT and a highly explicit WHEN clause containing ten natural quoted trigger phrases with good synonym coverage. Its only weakness is that the WHAT states the domain and purpose without enumerating the specific authoring/compliance actions the skill performs, and a couple of triggers ('review skill', 'skill PR') have minor overlap risk with code-review skills.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

"Guidelines for writing Agent Skills that comply with the agentskills.io specification" names the domain and deliverable but enumerates no specific actions (e.g., validating frontmatter, checking token budgets, reviewing structure). It names the domain with 1-2 generic actions, matching the anchor for 'names domain and 1-2 concrete actions, but not comprehensive' rather than the level above, which lists several specific actions.

3 / 5

Completeness

The description explicitly answers WHAT ("Guidelines for writing Agent Skills that comply with the agentskills.io specification") and WHEN (a WHEN: clause with ten concrete quoted trigger phrases). Both are as explicit as the anchor example that clearly answers both what AND when with concrete trigger phrases; it is not the level below, where the 'when' is only weakly implied.

5 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

WHEN: "create a skill", "new skill", "write a skill", "skill template", "skill structure", "review skill", "skill PR", "skill compliance", "SKILL.md format", "skill best practices" provides ten natural, user-sayable trigger phrases with synonyms (create/new/write) and the artifact name (SKILL.md). This exceeds the 'good keyword coverage; a few natural terms missing' anchor and matches the comprehensive synonym-coverage anchor.

5 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

The niche (agentskills.io spec compliance) is mostly distinct, with niche-specific triggers like "skill template", "SKILL.md format", and "skill compliance". However, "review skill" and "skill PR" carry minor overlap risk with general code-review skills, matching 'mostly distinct; minor overlap risk with closely related skills' rather than the minimal-conflict anchor above.

4 / 5

Total

17

/

20

Passed

Validation

87%

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

CriteriaDescriptionResult

relative_links

Relative link issues: 3 missing, 5 deeper-than-1-level

Warning

referenced_paths_exist

Referenced path issues: 3 missing, 5 deeper-than-1-level

Warning

Total

14

/

16

Passed

Repository
microsoft/GitHub-Copilot-for-Azure
Reviewed

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