Conciseness

The body is dense and reference-grade — the 20-row table and terse rules earn their tokens, and nothing explains concepts Claude already knows. Minor trimmable material remains: the opening blockquote partially duplicates the description's trigger list, and the 'Waza support-review override' paragraph is wordy. Matches 'efficient; minor instances of over-explanation that could be trimmed', not the lean score-5 anchor.

Actionability

Guidance is concrete and directly usable: exact paths (.squad/decisions.md, .squad/casting/registry.json), exact state tools (squad_state_append), and executable decision rules ('Corrections go in a new entry that references the prior one'; 'use an equivalent atomic backend operation or stop on non-local storage'). Falls short of fully copy-paste-ready score 5 only because it defers to external procedures ('.squad/casting-transactions.md's locked SDK writer', 'the guide's explicit approved archive-and-initialize maintenance procedure') without inlining or linking what those entail.

Workflow Clarity

As a lookup/adjudication reference, precedence is explicitly sequenced (rule 1: 'squad.agent.md wins') and the risky paths carry explicit guards and stop conditions ('managed-pair corruption or a missing manifest must never trigger that path'). However, there is no explicit step-by-step adjudication procedure or validation checkpoint for the conflict-resolution workflow itself, so it sits at 'clear sequence with most checkpoints present; minor validation gaps' rather than the checklist-level score-5 anchor.

Progressive Disclosure

A single self-contained ~49-line body, well-organized into routing note, backend note, hierarchy table, and rules, with no nested or buried references and no need for external bundle files — matching the short-skill guidance that well-organized sections with no external-reference needs score 5. Mentions of .squad/casting-transactions.md are runtime files the skill documents, not bundle navigation.

Specificity

Enumerates multiple concrete capabilities comprehensively: 'which files are authoritative, which are derived/append-only, who may write each one, who may read each one, and the precedence rules when they conflict'. This matches the score-5 anchor of multiple specific concrete actions with comprehensive coverage.

Completeness

Explicitly answers both 'what' (the complete file-by-file source-of-truth hierarchy with read/write permissions and precedence rules) and 'when' ('loads this on demand when it needs to resolve a write conflict, decide where a piece of state belongs, or answer a who owns this file question') with concrete trigger phrases. This is the score-5 pattern; the 'when' clause is explicit and specific, so it is not the score-4 case.

Trigger Term Quality

Includes natural, on-domain phrases users would actually say ('resolve a write conflict', 'who owns this file', 'where does this state belong'), but misses a few natural synonyms and concrete file paths (e.g. '.squad/', 'file layout') that would broaden triggering. Fits the 'good keyword coverage; a few natural terms missing' anchor rather than the comprehensive score-5 example.

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

The niche (Squad's internal file authority hierarchy) and its triggers ('source-of-truth', 'write conflict', 'who owns this file') are domain-specific and unlikely to fire for unrelated skills. Clear niche with minimal conflict risk.