plan-interview
Ensures alignment between user and Claude during feature/spec planning through a structured interview process. Use this skill when the user invokes /plan-interview before implementing a new feature, refactoring, or any non-trivial implementation task. The skill runs an upfront interview to gather requirements across technical constraints, scope boundaries, risk tolerance, and success criteria before any codebase exploration. Do NOT use this skill for: pure research/exploration tasks, simple bug fixes, or when the user just wants standard planning without the interview process.
84
76%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
96%
2.00xAverage score across 3 eval scenarios
Advisory
Suggest reviewing before use
Optimize this skill with Tessl
npx tessl skill review --optimize ./skills/plan-interview/SKILL.mdQuality
Discovery
89%Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.
This is a well-crafted skill description that excels in completeness and distinctiveness. It clearly defines when to use and when not to use the skill, includes a specific command trigger (/plan-interview), and distinguishes itself from general planning skills. The main area for improvement is in specificity of the concrete actions performed during the interview process.
Suggestions
Add more specific concrete actions the skill performs, e.g., 'Asks targeted questions about scope, generates a requirements summary, produces a structured spec document with acceptance criteria'.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | The description names the domain (feature/spec planning) and describes the general action (structured interview process to gather requirements), but the specific actions are described at a high level ('gather requirements across technical constraints, scope boundaries, risk tolerance, and success criteria') rather than listing concrete discrete actions like 'asks clarifying questions, produces requirements document, identifies risks'. | 2 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both 'what' (structured interview process to gather requirements across technical constraints, scope boundaries, risk tolerance, and success criteria) and 'when' (when user invokes /plan-interview before implementing a new feature, refactoring, or non-trivial implementation). Also includes explicit 'Do NOT use' guidance which strengthens the 'when' clause. | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Includes strong natural trigger terms: '/plan-interview' as an explicit command, plus natural phrases like 'feature', 'spec planning', 'refactoring', 'implementation task', 'requirements', 'interview'. Also includes negative triggers (bug fixes, research/exploration) which help with disambiguation. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Highly distinctive due to the specific '/plan-interview' command trigger, the explicit 'structured interview process' framing, and the clear negative boundaries (not for bug fixes, research, or standard planning). This would be very unlikely to conflict with general planning or coding skills. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 11 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
62%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
This skill provides excellent actionable guidance with a well-structured multi-phase workflow, clear validation checkpoints, and a thorough worked example. However, it is significantly over-verbose — the philosophy section, install instructions, interoperability pipeline details, and explanatory prose could be dramatically condensed without losing any actionable value. The content would benefit from splitting reference material (plan template, refinement prompts, pipeline position) into separate files.
Suggestions
Remove or drastically shorten the Philosophy section, Install section, and Interoperability section — these add ~60 lines of context that don't help Claude execute the skill
Move the plan template (Required Elements markdown block) and the refinement loop prompts into separate reference files to reduce the main skill's token footprint
Cut explanatory prose throughout — e.g., 'This audit prevents the most common agent failure: confidently proceeding when the knowledge simply isn't there' is unnecessary narration that Claude doesn't need
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | The skill is extremely verbose at ~300+ lines. It includes extensive philosophical preamble ('Make the change easy, then make the change'), explains concepts Claude already knows (what interviews are, what edge cases are), and includes lengthy sections like the multi-plan synthesis, interoperability pipeline descriptions, and install instructions that bloat the content significantly. Many sections could be cut by 50%+ without losing actionable information. | 1 / 3 |
Actionability | The skill provides highly concrete, actionable guidance: specific question domains with examples, a clear plan template with required markdown sections, explicit handling for edge cases via a table, tool-specific instructions (AskUserQuestion vs chat fallback), file naming conventions (plan-NNN-<slug>.md), and a complete worked example showing the interview flow end-to-end. | 3 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | The four-phase workflow (Interview → Exploration → Plan Generation → Post-Approval) is clearly sequenced with explicit validation checkpoints: the Knowledge Audit between exploration and planning, the iterative refinement loop with clear stopping criteria, the fresh-eyes mandatory re-read step, and the planning depth calibration. The feedback loops for refinement passes and error recovery (contradictory requirements, interrupted sessions) are well-defined. | 3 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | The skill references `references/iterative-plan-refinement-prompts.md` for reusable prompt templates, which is good progressive disclosure, but no bundle files are provided to support this reference. The main content is monolithic — the plan template, interview process, refinement loop, multi-plan synthesis, interoperability section, and example are all inline when several could be split into reference files. The install instructions and philosophy section add front-matter bulk before the actionable content. | 2 / 3 |
Total | 9 / 12 Passed |
Validation
100%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 11 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
No warnings or errors.
- Repository
- pskoett/pskoett-ai-skills
- Commit
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- Reviewed
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