Conciseness

The body is dense and table-driven, assumes Conventional Commits knowledge upfront ('Conventional-Commits-compatible grammar; different type set and semantics') and never pads with basics Claude already knows. A few rhetorical/rationale asides ('chore is not a gap in the taxonomy, it is overflow', 'perf without a number is refactor with a hope', the 'Absence encodes absence' paragraph) could be trimmed, so it sits at anchor 4 ('efficient; minor instances of over-explanation') rather than the fully lean anchor 5, and well above anchor 3 since there is no unnecessary explanation of general concepts.

Actionability

Provides exact grammar, a 12-type table with 'fires when' conditions, mechanical decision rules ('Read top to bottom, stop at the first match'; Rule F's 'fails against the parent commit' experiment), exact trailer syntax, and five complete copy-paste-ready example commits covering the common cases (feature, agent-authored fix, security+deps+breaking, ignore, build breaking), plus a runnable verify command ('echo "$MSG" | bunx commitlint'). This matches anchor 5's 'copy-paste ready code or commands; specific examples cover the common cases'; anchor 4 would require missing key details, and the only gap (the diff-aware check) is at the verification periphery, not in the core guidance.

Workflow Clarity

The procedure is clearly ordered — type cascade with an explicit reading order, mechanical tie-break rules, a five-question 'Before committing' checkpoint, and a Verify command — which meets anchor 4's 'clear sequence with most checkpoints present'. It is not anchor 5 because there is no explicit error-recovery loop when commitlint rejects, and the diff-aware validation needed for Rules F and I is acknowledged ('need a separate diff-aware check') but never provided; it is above anchor 3 because validation checkpoints (the checklist and commitlint) are explicit, not merely implied.

Progressive Disclosure

Core decision content is appropriately kept inline and the Reference section gives well-signaled, one-level-deep pointers with one-line descriptions ('docs/examples.md — cookbook with ~80 real mined commits', 'docs/ai-authorship-rulings.md — the legal basis for the provenance design'). However, none of the three referenced docs/ files exist in the skill bundle (no docs/, references/, scripts/, or assets/ directories are present), so every reference dangles — a genuine organization gap that fits anchor 4's 'minor organization gaps' and rules out anchor 5's 'easy navigation'; it stays above anchor 3 because the references are clearly signaled and the inline/offline split itself is correct.

Specificity

Names the domain ('Write commit messages under the agent-commits convention') and several concrete capabilities — type decisions ('deciding between feat/fix/refactor/perf') and provenance recording ('legally-grounded AI provenance (Assisted-by, never Co-authored-by)') — matching anchor 4's 'lists several specific actions; minor gaps in coverage'. It is not anchor 5 because some capabilities (splitting commits, emitting trailer syntax) are only implied by convention features ('facts in trailers', 'If nothing fits... Split it' lives in the body) rather than listed as actions, and clearly above anchor 3's '1-2 concrete actions'.

Completeness

Explicitly answers what ('Write commit messages under the agent-commits convention - a Conventional Commits fork with no chore catch-all, intent-only type tokens, facts in trailers...') and when, with three concrete trigger clauses: 'Use when composing a commit in a repo whose commitlint.config.js extends agent-commits, when deciding between feat/fix/refactor/perf, or when recording AI participation'. This matches anchor 5's 'clearly and explicitly answers both what AND when with concrete trigger phrases'; anchor 4 would require the 'when' to be less explicit or specific, which it is not.

Trigger Term Quality

Contains natural phrases a user would actually say — 'composing a commit', 'feat/fix/refactor/perf', 'recording AI participation', 'Co-authored-by' — plus a strong file-based trigger ('commitlint.config.js extends agent-commits'), the analogue of a file-extension trigger. A few natural variants ('git commit', 'commit convention', 'chore') are missing, which is precisely anchor 4's 'good keyword coverage; a few natural terms missing' rather than anchor 5's comprehensive synonym coverage.

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

Occupies a clear niche — this specific convention rather than commit messages generally — anchored by a distinct repo-detecting trigger ('a repo whose commitlint.config.js extends agent-commits'). The 'deciding between feat/fix/refactor/perf' trigger could marginally overlap a generic conventional-commits skill, but it still resolves to this convention's own type set, so conflict risk is minimal per anchor 5; anchor 4's 'minor overlap risk with closely related skills' would require a more ambiguous trigger.