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holistic-analysis

Forces a full step-back re-analysis when a fix or refactor is not working: traces the whole execution path end-to-end — entry point to exit, every block, every contract boundary, and the full data flow — instead of patching in isolation. Three modes: `fix` (default) for bugs and broken behavior, `refactor` for restructuring, and `review` for PR validation (returns intent-match and system-fit findings for the `pr-reviewer` agent to consume — never run standalone for routine review work). Trigger ONLY once at least one isolated fix attempt has already failed, or on an explicit request for a full execution-path analysis: "step back", "think holistically", "analyze the whole thing", "zoom out", "look at the bigger picture", and "rethink this" qualify in that context only. Never for trivial one-line fixes or first-attempt debugging. Also triggers on "/holistic", "/step-back", "/rethink", "/zoom-out".

67

Quality

84%

Does it follow best practices?

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SecuritybySnyk

Low

Low-risk findings worth noting

SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

70%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-engineered multi-phase protocol with excellent sequencing, validation gates, and feedback loops, and largely concrete guidance. The two real weaknesses are missing bundle files referenced three times (breaking progressive disclosure and the review-mode flow) and accumulative verbosity from research citations and tangential narrative sections.

Suggestions

Add the referenced rule files (rules/call-graph-map.md, rules/review-mode.md, rules/codebase-knowledge-write.md) to the bundle — or remove the links and inline the essential procedure for review mode, since its full flow is currently unreachable.

Trim non-actionable padding: the research citations in Phases 2/5, the motivational asides, and the codebase-knowledge section could each be reduced to one or two lines without losing guidance value.

Document or inline a fallback for the /confidence command gates (Phases 6 and 8), since the skill's thresholds depend on an external skill that may not be available when this skill runs.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The protocol is mostly tight (tables, checklists, command snippets), but it carries unnecessary tokens: research citations ("Zheng et al., 2023 — up to 36% improvement", "Wang & Zhao, 2023 — up to 26.9% improvement"), a 14-line codebase-knowledge narrative section, and motivational asides ("Bugs hide in the parts you'd normally skip"). Not a 2 because the majority of the body is actionable structure rather than padding; not a 4 because several sections beyond minor trims could be compressed.

3 / 5

Actionability

Highly concrete for a process skill: exact commands ("git log -10 --oneline -- <file>"), table schemas for hypotheses and per-block analysis, output templates, and numeric thresholds with iteration limits ("Below 70%: ... Up to 2 iterations"). It misses a 5 because the review-mode procedure and codebase-knowledge procedure are delegated to rule files that are not present in the bundle, and the /confidence gates depend on an external skill, leaving those flows not fully executable from what is written.

4 / 5

Workflow Clarity

Eight explicitly sequenced phases with a Contents navigation list, a mode-detection step, an analysis validation gate with explicit thresholds (90%+ / 70-89% / below 70%), and feedback loops that route failures back to Phase 4 with bounded iterations. This matches the top anchor: clear sequence, explicit validation steps, and error-recovery loops.

5 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

The body is well structured with a Contents list and clearly signaled one-level-deep references, but the referenced files — rules/call-graph-map.md, rules/review-mode.md, and rules/codebase-knowledge-write.md — do not exist in the bundle (no references/, scripts/, assets/, or rules/ directories are present). Scored against the actual bundle structure, the disclosure promise is unfulfilled: navigation leads to missing files, and the body is 340 lines with detail that the missing rule files were meant to carry.

3 / 5

Total

15

/

20

Passed

Description

95%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.

An exemplary description: it states concrete capabilities, defines three modes with their distinct purposes, gives explicit positive and negative trigger conditions with natural user phrases, and clearly delineates its niche from ordinary debugging skills. The only minor weakness is process-level phrasing and slight padding that could be tightened.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

The description lists several concrete actions ("traces the whole execution path end-to-end — entry point to exit, every block, every contract boundary, and the full data flow") and defines three distinct modes with their use cases. It falls short of a 5 because the actions are described at a process level with some motivational framing ("instead of patching in isolation") rather than as a crisp enumeration of deliverables.

4 / 5

Completeness

It explicitly answers both what (full execution-path re-analysis across three defined modes) and when ("Trigger ONLY once at least one isolated fix attempt has already failed", with concrete qualifying trigger phrases), and adds explicit negative boundaries ("Never for trivial one-line fixes or first-attempt debugging"). This clearly matches the anchor requiring both what and when with concrete trigger phrases.

5 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

It comprehensively covers natural phrases users would say — "step back", "think holistically", "analyze the whole thing", "zoom out", "look at the bigger picture", "rethink this" — plus slash-command variants (/holistic, /step-back, /rethink, /zoom-out). Coverage includes synonyms and colloquial variations, matching the top anchor.

5 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

It occupies a clear niche — post-failure holistic re-analysis — with explicit guardrails against overlapping with routine debugging ("Never for ... first-attempt debugging") and scopes review mode to feeding the pr-reviewer agent, minimizing wrong-skill triggers.

5 / 5

Total

19

/

20

Passed

Validation

81%

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation — 13 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

CriteriaDescriptionResult

metadata_field

'metadata' should map string keys to string values

Warning

frontmatter_unknown_keys

Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata

Warning

relative_links

Relative link issues: 5 missing

Warning

Total

13

/

16

Passed

Repository
mthines/agent-skills
Reviewed

Table of Contents

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