Conciseness

Every section delivers opinionated, non-generic guidance in dense tables and short examples — partition-key verdicts, GSI-vs-LSI conditions, TransactWriteItems limits (100 items / 4 MB / 2x WCU), the ~100 KB S3-offload threshold. There is no explanation of concepts Claude already knows and no padding, matching the 'every token earns its place' anchor.

Actionability

For an instruction/design skill, the guidance is maximally concrete: concrete PK/SK examples with query predicates, decision rules with exact thresholds, per-scenario approach tables, and a Common Mistakes table mapping each mistake to a specific fix. The only thin spot (the adjacency-list section defers examples to the reference file) is a deliberate progressive-disclosure split, not a missing key detail.

Workflow Clarity

The design process is well ordered — 'Identify all access patterns before creating tables' is an explicit sequencing directive, sections follow the natural design order (access patterns → keys/indexes → modeling → concurrency → global tables), and the Common Mistakes table doubles as a corrective checklist. It falls short of a 5 because there is no explicit step-by-step design procedure or checkpoint-style verification list; the sequence is implied by section order rather than enumerated. No destructive/batch-operation cap applies.

Progressive Disclosure

The ~105-line body is a true overview: each topic section is a digestible summary with a clearly signaled 'See references/X.md for...' pointer, and a consolidated Reference Files section lists all five one-level-deep files with accurate descriptions. All five referenced files exist (spot-checked key-and-index-design.md, whose contents match the pointer's summary), and no reference nests deeper than one level.

Specificity

Lists multiple concrete actions — 'designing DynamoDB schemas, choosing partition/sort keys, creating secondary indexes, modeling relationships, handling time series data, or optimizing query patterns' — with comprehensive coverage of the table-design domain. It matches the anchor-5 example's breadth without padding, and is not a level-4 case since there is no noticeable coverage gap in the skill's stated scope.

Completeness

Explicitly answers both: what ('AWS DynamoDB best practices for table design and data modeling') and when ('Use when designing DynamoDB schemas... Triggers on tasks involving...'). It mirrors the anchor-5 example structure and additionally adds negative boundary guidance ('Does not cover DynamoDB SDK/API reference or CloudFormation/Terraform resource definitions'), which a level-4 description would lack.

Trigger Term Quality

Natural trigger vocabulary a DynamoDB user would actually say is comprehensively covered: 'DynamoDB schemas', 'partition/sort keys', 'secondary indexes', 'GSI/LSI', 'single-table design', 'adjacency lists', 'write sharding', 'capacity planning'. The anchor-4 case ('a few natural terms missing') fits worse; legacy synonyms like 'hash/range key' are the only omissions and the modern canonical terms are all present.

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

Clear niche with distinct triggers — every trigger is DynamoDB-specific, and the explicit exclusions of SDK/API reference and CloudFormation/Terraform definitions sharply reduce overlap with general AWS or IaC skills. It is a clean fit for the 'clear niche with distinct triggers; minimal conflict risk' anchor.