coding

Best practices for code editing, search, and file operations

Quality

75%

Does it follow best practices?

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Adds up to 20 points to the overall score

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Securityby

Passed

No findings from the security scan

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tessl review fix ./skills/coding/SKILL.md

Quality

Content

100%

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

The body is a tight, actionable set of directives that assumes Claude's competence and avoids restating basics. It earns full marks for conciseness, actionability, workflow clarity with explicit verification feedback loops, and well-organized progressive disclosure appropriate to a short single-purpose skill.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The body is lean and assumes Claude's competence: terse bullet directives like 'Prefer apply_patch over write_file' and 'Minimal changes' with no padding or explanation of basic programming concepts, so every token earns its place.	3 / 3
Actionability	It gives concrete, executable guidance throughout — naming specific tools (apply_patch, read_file, glob, grep, list_dir, shell) and concrete commands to run, e.g. 'Use shell to run the project's test command' and 'use grep to search for all occurrences'.	3 / 3
Workflow Clarity	The 'Verify Before You Finish' section lays out an explicit sequenced workflow — reproduce first, re-run after the fix, run existing tests, narrow until both pass, re-read the final diff — with feedback loops (a test you broke is your bug) and recovery checkpoints for a risky edit operation.	3 / 3
Progressive Disclosure	This is a simple, single-purpose skill well under 50 lines with no external references needed; content is organized into clearly labeled sections (Tool Usage Discipline, Code Change Discipline, Code Quality, Verify Before You Finish), which satisfies the simple-skill path to a 3.	3 / 3
	Total	12 / 12 Passed

Description

50%

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 clear and third-person but generic: it names a domain and a few action categories without concrete specifics or an explicit 'Use when...' trigger clause. It is adequate but would benefit from sharper capability wording and explicit invocation guidance.

Suggestions

Add an explicit 'Use when...' clause naming natural triggers (e.g. 'Use when editing, refactoring, searching, or modifying code and files').

Replace generic categories with concrete actions, e.g. 'Apply targeted patches, search codebases with grep/glob, and edit files with minimal changes'.

Tighten the scope to a distinct niche to reduce overlap with other development skills.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	Names a domain ('code editing, search, and file operations') and three action areas, but these are broad categories rather than multiple concrete actions; it stops short of listing specific operations like refactoring, patching, or debugging.	2 / 3
Completeness	It states what the skill covers, but there is no 'Use when...' clause or equivalent explicit trigger guidance for when Claude should invoke it, which caps completeness at 2 per the rubric.	2 / 3
Trigger Term Quality	Terms like 'code editing', 'search', and 'file operations' are reasonable but somewhat generic; common natural variations a user would actually say (e.g. 'fix a bug', 'refactor', 'find in files') are not surfaced in the description itself.	2 / 3
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	The scope ('code editing, search, file operations') is broad enough that it could overlap with several other development-oriented skills; it lacks a clearly distinct niche that would prevent conflict.	2 / 3
	Total	8 / 12 Passed

Validation

93%

Warnings & errors only

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

Criteria	Description	Result
frontmatter_unknown_keys	Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata	Warning

	Total	15 / 16 Passed

Repository: nearai/ironclaw
Path: skills/coding/SKILL.md
Commit: b60038b

Reviewed: 2 days ago

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