content-brief-authoring

How to author a content brief that actually guides a writer (human or AI) to produce a piece that ranks, converts, or both. Per-piece editorial brief: target keyword and cluster, search intent, audience and JTBD, heading structure, entity coverage for AEO/GEO, internal linking strategy, success criteria. The middle path between thin briefs (a keyword and a deadline) and thick briefs (a 4-page document nobody reads). Triggers on content brief, brief the writer, brief the article, brief authoring, content brief template, brief audit, per-piece brief, editorial brief, target keyword brief, search intent brief. Also triggers when briefing a human writer or an AI agent on a single content piece.

Quality

83%

Does it follow best practices?

Run evals on this skill

Adds up to 20 points to the overall score

View guide

Securityby

Passed

No findings from the security scan

Quality

Content

71%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.

A well-architected, opinionated skill body with excellent progressive disclosure and strong actionability, weakened mainly by content repetition (the 12 fields restated as a 12-point framework, and the thin/thick thesis repeated in the closing). Workflows are clearly sequenced but lack explicit validate-retry feedback loops for the governance/handoff steps.

Suggestions

Consolidate the duplicated '12 fields' and '12 considerations' sections — keep the detailed field definitions once and let the framework section reference them rather than restating each item.

Add an explicit validate-then-fix feedback loop to the brief-to-writer handoff (e.g. 'if the draft misses required entities, return to the brief, not just rewrite') to lift workflow clarity above 4.

Trim the closing section, which restates the thin-vs-thick thesis and re-lists the 12-field checklist already enumerated earlier.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	Mostly efficient and well-structured, but the 12-fields list appears twice (once as 'The 12 fields of an effective brief', once as 'The framework: 12 considerations'), the thin/thick/effective distinction is restated in the closing, and several sections re-explain the SERP-intent-override point already covered, so it could be tightened.	3 / 5
Actionability	Provides concrete, specific guidance throughout — explicit field definitions, numbered entity-discovery steps ('Pull SERP top 10', 'Identify entities mentioned across multiple pages'), and real worked examples like the CUPED one-line note and the 'this draft hits 4 of the 5 required entities' draft reference — with only minor gaps (no example of the structured YAML/JSON brief payload).	4 / 5
Workflow Clarity	Clear multi-step sequences with checkpoints exist (entity discovery is a numbered 4-step process; the framework is an ordered 12-step walk; the handoff lists explicit checkpoints like 'Writer asks clarifying questions before drafting'), but the destructive/batch-adjacent governance and handoff steps lack an explicit validate-then-fix retry loop.	4 / 5
Progressive Disclosure	Clear overview with well-signaled one-level-deep references to 8 real reference files (verified present in ./references/), content appropriately split into SKILL.md overview + per-topic detail files, and a dedicated 'Reference files' index making navigation easy.	5 / 5
	Total	16 / 20 Passed

Description

96%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, specific description that covers what the skill does, when to use it, and the trigger phrases a user would naturally say, with concrete capability enumeration. The only soft spot is minor overlap with its named sister skill `creative-brief`, which the body carefully disambiguates but the description does not.

Suggestions

Add a one-clause disambiguation in the description (e.g. 'per-piece brief, not a project brief — see creative-brief') to reduce conflict risk with the sister skill the body already distinguishes.

Consider trimming the catalog_summary duplication risk by ensuring the description's trigger list does not also fire for project-level briefing requests.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	Lists multiple concrete capabilities — 'target keyword and cluster, search intent, audience and JTBD, heading structure, entity coverage for AEO/GEO, internal linking strategy, success criteria' — which is comprehensive coverage of what the skill does.	5 / 5
Completeness	Clearly answers what ('author a content brief that actually guides a writer... ranks, converts') and when via an explicit 'Triggers on...' / 'Also triggers when' clause with concrete trigger phrases.	5 / 5
Trigger Term Quality	Extensive natural trigger phrases users would say: 'content brief', 'brief the writer', 'brief authoring', 'content brief template', 'brief audit', 'editorial brief', 'target keyword brief', 'search intent brief', plus the explicit AI-agent variation.	5 / 5
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	Has a clear niche (per-piece editorial brief) and distinct triggers, but the catalog term 'content' and 'brief' wording creates minor overlap risk with the sibling `creative-brief` skill it itself names; not fully minimal conflict risk.	4 / 5
	Total	19 / 20 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: rampstackco/claude-skills
Path: skills/content-brief-authoring/SKILL.md
Commit: 0479242

Reviewed: 6 days ago

Table of Contents

Discovery Implementation Validation

Is this your skill?

If you maintain this skill, you can claim it as your own. Once claimed, you can manage eval scenarios, bundle related skills, attach documentation or rules, and ensure cross-agent compatibility.