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instance-awareness

Load when the request depends on what is already on this instance rather than on what the user just typed: a short or ambiguous opener ("fix it", "carry on", "what should I look at"), a reference to earlier work in a new conversation, or any question about what has recently run or broken.

Quality

82%

Does it follow best practices?

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SecuritybySnyk

Passed

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SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

96%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.

The body is exemplary instruction-only skill content: a memorable one-rule framing, a cost-ordered lookup ladder with explicit stop conditions and error recovery, a question-to-source map, and honest limits. Its only structural question is whether ~108 lines in a single file is the right split, since nothing is offloaded to reference files.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

Every line carries instance-specific knowledge Claude cannot have otherwise — block semantics ('It is a set of pointers, not contents'), the 20-entry expand cap, entry pruning, retention windows — with no padding and no explanation of known concepts. This is the anchor 5 case: lean, assuming competence, every token earning its place.

5 / 5

Actionability

Exact tool signatures with parameters are given ('activity(action="expand", id=N)', 'get_workflow(workflowId, full=true)'), plus a worked example utterance ('picking up the stale-issue nudge workflow, which failed twice this morning') and a question-to-source table. Per the rubric's instruction-skill note, the absence of code is not penalized when guidance is this executable — not anchor 4 because there are no gaps in the common cases.

5 / 5

Workflow Clarity

The read ladder is explicitly ordered ('Read in this order — cheapest first', 'Stop at the first one that answers yours') with an error-recovery loop ('An id that no longer resolves is ordinary — entries are pruned — so carry on rather than treating it as an error') and explicit boundary limits in 'Where this stops'. The skill is read-only, so the destructive/batch validation cap does not apply.

5 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

Sections are well organized with no dead references (verified: no references/, scripts/, or assets/ directories exist), but the ~108-line body exceeds the under-50-line simple-skill exception and material such as the surface table or limits could plausibly live in a reference file. Anchor 4 fits: good structure, appropriately placed content, minor organization gaps; anchor 5 requires well-signaled one-level-deep references that are not present.

4 / 5

Total

19

/

20

Passed

Description

61%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.

The description is a strong trigger document: it states precisely when to load the skill and quotes the exact openers a user would type. Its weakness is that it never says what the skill does — the capabilities are left entirely implicit, which drags down completeness and specificity.

Suggestions

Add a 'what' clause naming the concrete capabilities, e.g. 'Resolve these by reading the instance's activity log, workflows, and execution history before asking the user.'

Include common synonym openers such as 'continue', 'resume', or 'pick up where we left off' alongside the existing quoted examples to broaden natural trigger coverage.

State the outcome the user gets (an unambiguous target workflow or failure identified without a clarifying question) so both 'what' and 'when' are explicit.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

Concrete trigger scenarios are quoted verbatim ('a short or ambiguous opener ("fix it", "carry on", "what should I look at")', 'a reference to earlier work in a new conversation'), but the only explicitly stated action is 'Load' — what the skill does once loaded is never named. This matches anchor 3 (domain plus concrete specifics, not comprehensive) rather than anchor 2, since the instance-state domain is named precisely rather than generically.

3 / 5

Completeness

The 'when' is maximally explicit ('Load when the request depends on what is already on this instance'), but the 'what' is only implied — the actual capabilities (reading the activity log, inspecting workflows, debugging executions) must be inferred, and the guidelines say to score only what is explicitly stated. Anchor 2 is too harsh since the functional domain is stated; anchor 4 requires both 'what' and 'when' to be present with the 'what' explicit.

3 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

Natural openers users actually type are quoted directly ('fix it', 'carry on', 'what should I look at', 'what has recently run or broken'), giving strong keyword coverage. Not 5 because common synonyms such as 'continue', 'resume', or 'pick up where we left off' are absent.

4 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

'What is already on this instance' and 'what has recently run or broken' carve a distinct instance-state niche with triggers unlikely to fire for unrelated skills. Only minor overlap risk with generic conversation-history or context-recovery skills, matching anchor 4 rather than anchor 5's fully conflict-free niche.

4 / 5

Total

14

/

20

Passed

Validation

93%

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

Validation — 15 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

CriteriaDescriptionResult

frontmatter_unknown_keys

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

Warning

Total

15

/

16

Passed

Repository

n8n-io/n8n

Path

packages/@n8n/instance-ai/skills/instance-awareness/SKILL.md

Reviewed

Table of Contents

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