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context-surfing

Monitors context window health during large, long-running, multi-session, or explicitly context-sensitive work. Uses bounded external anchors, one cold-context review when self-recovery is uncertain, and a clean handoff on real drift. Do not auto-activate merely because a medium task has an intent frame and plan.

64

Quality

80%

Does it follow best practices?

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SecuritybySnyk

Passed

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tessl review fix ./plugin/skills/context-surfing/SKILL.md

The canonical home for this skill is context-surfing in pskoett/pskoett-ai-skills

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.

The body excels at workflow clarity — protocols are fully sequenced with validation gates, bounded retries, and feedback loops — and is largely actionable with copy-paste commands and an explicit subagent fallback. It is dragged down by a pervasive metaphor and duplicated sections that inflate token cost, and by a monolithic 420-line structure with no reference files despite clearly separable material. The undefined learning-aggregator command is the one dangling external reference.

Suggestions

Cut or compress the ocean-wave metaphor (Mental Model section, 'No wipeouts. No zombie sessions' prose, and the Principles section) into a two-line framing, and de-duplicate the pipeline listing and the pre-commit check description (Lifecycle Position vs Pipeline position; Monitoring Paradox vs Riding the Wave step 2) to reclaim roughly a quarter of the body's tokens.

Move the handoff file template and the intent-framed-agent relationship/cadence section into a references/ file (e.g. references/handoff-template.md, references/interop.md) with one-level-deep links from the Exit Protocol and Lifecycle Position sections.

Define or remove the learning-aggregator reference: either point to where the command lives (a sibling skill or script path) or describe the aggregation outcome generically so the section is self-contained.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

Most of the body is genuinely novel operational guidance (drift signal catalogs, recovery/exit protocols, handoff template), but several padded or duplicated sections remain: the extended ocean-wave metaphor ("Paddling in / The peak / The shoulder / The close-out", "No wipeouts. No zombie sessions"), the pipeline enumerated twice ("Lifecycle Position" and "Pipeline position"), the pre-commit anchor check described in full twice (Monitoring Paradox and "Riding the Wave" step 2), and a closing "Principles" section restating earlier content. This is mostly efficient with unnecessary explanation to trim — anchor 3 — rather than the several padded sections of anchor 2 or the minor trims of anchor 4.

3 / 5

Actionability

The body gives copy-paste ready commands (`entire status`, `ls .context-surfing/handoff-*.md 2>/dev/null`, `touch '<handoff-path>.consumed'`, install commands, the settings.json hook block) and a complete handoff file template, with an explicit fallback when the `context-monitor` subagent file is absent. However `learning-aggregator --deep` is invoked with no definition, path, or fallback, a concrete gap that keeps this at anchor 4 rather than the fully self-contained coverage of anchor 5.

4 / 5

Workflow Clarity

Every multi-step process is clearly sequenced with explicit validation and feedback loops: Activation (numbered anchor-loading steps with standalone fallback), Recovery Protocol (Step 1 re-read, Step 2 reconcile with explicit branch outcomes, bounded by "at most one local re-anchor and one cold-context check"), Exit Protocol (Step 1–3 with the full handoff checklist), and the next-session resume procedure. The pre-commit anchor check (quote verbatim from a fresh read → state pending action → verify trace-back → enter Recovery Protocol on failure) is an explicit validation gate before side-effecting actions, matching anchor 5. No destructive or batch operation cap applies.

5 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

The scripts/handoff-checker.sh hook is properly externalized and referenced from both the frontmatter hook registration and the Hook Integration section (verified as a real file in the bundle), with no nested references. But the ~420-line body is fully inline: the handoff template, the intent-framed-agent relationship/cadence section, and the pipeline interop details are natural candidates for references/ files that do not exist in the bundle, matching anchor 3 (content that should be separate is inline) rather than anchor 4's appropriately split content.

3 / 5

Total

15

/

20

Passed

Description

83%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.

A strong description with an explicit what, explicit positive and negative activation triggers, and a distinct niche. Its weaknesses are jargon-heavy action phrasing and incomplete coverage of the natural terms users would use when they need context-window management. It stays below the top level on specificity and trigger quality rather than on completeness or distinctiveness.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

"Monitors context window health", "uses bounded external anchors, one cold-context review when self-recovery is uncertain, and a clean handoff on real drift" lists several distinct actions, but they are phrased in pipeline-internal jargon rather than plain concrete operations, so it matches anchor 4 rather than the comprehensive plain-language coverage of anchor 5.

4 / 5

Completeness

The description explicitly answers both what ("Monitors context window health... uses bounded external anchors, one cold-context review... clean handoff") and when with concrete trigger conditions ("during large, long-running, multi-session, or explicitly context-sensitive work") plus an explicit negative activation boundary ("Do not auto-activate merely because a medium task has an intent frame and plan"). This matches anchor 5; the when-clause is explicit and specific, not the vaguer anchor 4 case.

5 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

"large, long-running, multi-session, or explicitly context-sensitive work" and "context window health" are natural phrases users would say, but common variations like "context window filling up", "running out of context", or "session handoff" are missing — good coverage with a few natural terms absent, matching anchor 4 rather than the comprehensive synonym coverage of anchor 5.

4 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

"Context window health" during long-running, multi-session work is a clear niche, and the do-not-activate clause disambiguates from intent-framed-agent — but the description does not distinguish it from the closely related session-context skill in its own pipeline, so anchor 4 (mostly distinct, minor overlap risk with closely related skills) fits better than anchor 5.

4 / 5

Total

17

/

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

pskoett/pskoett-ai-skills

Path

plugin/skills/context-surfing/SKILL.md

Reviewed

Table of Contents

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