creative-direction

Walk the user through four directional axes (tone register, aesthetic philosophy, audience relationship, sensory ambition) and produce a structured aesthetic brief that downstream content, copy, design, and art-direction skills consume as required input. The aesthetic depth layer, distinct from `creative-brief` (operational kickoff: scope, audience, deliverables, constraints). Use when a project needs aesthetic coherence across many small decisions and the user has only a vague feeling, or when multiple downstream aesthetic-producing skills need a shared brief. Triggers on creative direction, aesthetic direction, set the aesthetic, define the visual direction, what's the vibe, what's the tone, the four axes. Does NOT fire for a general kickoff brief (use `creative-brief`), tactical single-piece work, already-documented direction, purely functional output, or locked production-stage work.

Quality

85%

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

—

No eval scenarios have been run

Securityby

Advisory

Suggest reviewing before use

Quality

Content

70%

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

The body is well-structured with a clear sequenced workflow and excellent progressive disclosure into three one-level-deep reference files. It could be tightened in places and would be more self-contained if the brief template were at least sketched inline rather than only referenced.

Suggestions

Tighten the per-axis 'How to choose' prose and the discursive failure-pattern lines (e.g. 'the brief just makes the incoherence consistent') to instructional essentials, trimming tokens that don't change behavior.

Inline a minimal skeleton of the brief template (the six section headings) in the 'Output format' section so the body is actionable without first opening references/brief-template.md.

Consider condensing the four 'How to choose' paragraphs into a single decision heuristic, since each currently restates the audience-tradeoff pattern.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	Largely lean and free of basic-concept padding, but several passages ('How to choose' prose per axis, philosophical failure-pattern lines) are stylistic rather than instructional and could be tightened. Not score-1 (no padding about concepts Claude already knows); not score-3 (not every token earns its place).	2 / 3
Actionability	Gives concrete, specific guidance (named axis positions, a 7-step workflow, a 6-part output structure) but the fully executable artifact (the blank template) is delegated to a reference file rather than being self-contained in the body.	2 / 3
Workflow Clarity	A clear 7-step numbered workflow with explicit sequencing, and step 4 ('Surface tensions') acts as a checkpoint that flags risky combinations and asks the user to confirm or reconsider. This is an interactive, non-destructive process so the destructive-validation cap does not apply.	3 / 3
Progressive Disclosure	SKILL.md is an overview that points to three well-signaled reference files (axes-explained.md, brief-template.md, example-aesthetic-brief.md), all verified to exist and one level deep with no nested references, and the 'Reference files' section gives a one-line description of each.	3 / 3
	Total	10 / 12 Passed

Description

100%

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

The description is specific, trigger-rich, complete, and clearly differentiated from sibling skills. It names concrete actions, lists natural user-facing trigger phrases, and supplies both positive and negative firing guidance.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	Names multiple concrete actions ('Walk the user through four directional axes... and produce a structured aesthetic brief') and enumerates the four axes explicitly, matching the 'lists multiple specific concrete actions' anchor.	3 / 3
Completeness	Explicitly answers both 'what' (walk through four axes, produce a structured aesthetic brief for downstream skills) and 'when' ('Use when a project needs aesthetic coherence...'), with an explicit 'Does NOT fire for' exclusion clause.	3 / 3
Trigger Term Quality	Includes natural phrases a user would actually say — 'what's the vibe', 'set the aesthetic', 'define the visual direction', 'what's the tone' — giving good coverage of natural trigger terms.	3 / 3
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	Carves out a clear niche distinct from `creative-brief` (operational) and `art-direction` (specific deliverable) with a 'Does NOT fire for' clause, making wrong-skill triggering unlikely.	3 / 3
	Total	12 / 12 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
Commit: f1bc195

Reviewed: 15 days ago

Table of Contents

Discovery Implementation Validation

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