Content
67%Weight 40%Scale 1-5Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
The body is a well-structured, highly actionable instruction set with concrete templates, decision rules, and a clear update workflow. Its main cost is redundancy: classification guidance appears three times and the closing checklist and philosophy sections restate earlier content, inflating token usage without adding operational value.
Suggestions
Consolidate the three overlapping classification schemes (the When-to-Update trigger table, the Step 2 update-type table, and Interactive Mode's questions) into a single classification section, cutting Interactive Mode or reducing it to a pointer.
Replace the Quality Checklist's repetition of the 7-section requirements with a reference to the Mandatory Output section, keeping only checks that are not already stated elsewhere.
Drop or drastically shorten the Core Philosophy section ("What one person learns, everyone benefits from") since it adds no executable guidance, and add one filled-in real example of a completed spec entry to strengthen the templates.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | The body avoids explaining basics Claude already knows, but it is noticeably redundant: three overlapping classification schemes (the When-to-Update trigger table, the Step 2 update-type table, and Interactive Mode's questions), a Quality Checklist that repeats the 7-section requirements, and a motivational Core Philosophy section. Anchors 2 and 3 bracket it; it is efficient in parts but could be consolidated, fitting anchor 3 better than 2. | 3 / 5 |
Actionability | Concrete guidance throughout: a real bash command ("cat .trellis/spec/<category>/<file>.md"), seven complete markdown templates, and explicit decision rules with Wrong/Correct examples. The gap keeping it from 5 is that templates are placeholder-only with no filled-in example of a completed spec entry. | 4 / 5 |
Workflow Clarity | A clear 5-step sequence (identify, classify, read target, update, update index) with a read-before-edit duplicate check and a final Quality Checklist as checkpoints. Minor validation gaps: no explicit feedback loop for what to do when content duplicates existing spec material or how to re-verify after editing. | 4 / 5 |
Progressive Disclosure | A well-sectioned single document with no buried or nested references; the templates are operational content needed on every invocation, so keeping them inline is appropriate. Minor gaps: the Interactive Mode and Core Philosophy sections pad the file and could be trimmed or split out. | 4 / 5 |
Total | 15 / 20 Passed |