pillar-content-architecture

How to design a content hub that earns topical authority. Pillar topic selection, cluster planning, internal linking architecture, URL structure, pillar and cluster page anatomy, topical authority signals for SEO and AEO/GEO, and the maintenance discipline that distinguishes intentional hubs from accidental orphans. Triggers on pillar content, content hub, topic cluster, topical authority, content architecture, hub and spoke, pillar page, cluster page, content silo, internal linking strategy. Also triggers when a content set is not ranking despite individual piece quality, when a pillar was launched without a cluster, or when content has accumulated without an architecture.

Quality

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Does it follow best practices?

Impact

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No eval scenarios have been run

Securityby

Advisory

Suggest reviewing before use

Quality

Content

72%

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

The content is actionable and well-structured with proper progressive disclosure to real reference files, but it is verbose for an instruction skill and lacks explicit validation checkpoints in its design workflow.

Suggestions

Tighten rhetorical passages (the 'yard sale' intro, 'architecture is the moat' closing) and collapse the 12-consideration framework to a pointer list rather than restating each section, since the sections already carry the detail.

Add an explicit validation/verification checkpoint to the design workflow — e.g., before 'ship the hub plan,' verify the link graph is specified both top-down and bottom-up, URLs avoid the /blog/ trap, and a durable owner is named.

Trim repeated content (the 'everything is a pillar' and '/blog/ trap' anti-patterns appear both inline and in reference callouts) to recover token budget.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The body avoids explaining concepts Claude already knows, but ~250 lines of opinionated prose — the 'yard sale'/'moat' rhetoric, the closing section, and the 12-consideration framework that largely restates earlier sections — add tokens beyond what the actionable instruction requires.	2 / 3
Actionability	Concrete, executable guidance throughout: word-count ranges (2,500-5,000 pillar, 800-2,000 cluster), cluster sizes (8-15, sweet spot 10-12), the five-criterion selection framework with thresholds (sub-100 volume), specific URL patterns, and link placement rules ('first 200 words').	3 / 3
Workflow Clarity	The 12-consideration framework and ordered selection criteria provide a clear sequence, but the design workflow is a one-pass checklist with no explicit validation checkpoint or verify/fix/retry feedback loop before shipping the hub plan.	2 / 3
Progressive Disclosure	SKILL.md is a clear overview with well-signaled one-level-deep references — each section ends with 'Detail in [references/...]' and a 'Reference files' section lists all 10 files, all of which exist.	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 comprehensive, specific, and well-triggered, clearly stating what the skill does and when to use it with both keyword triggers and failure-mode triggers. It is clearly distinguishable from adjacent skills.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	Lists multiple concrete capabilities — 'Pillar topic selection, cluster planning, internal linking architecture, URL structure, pillar and cluster page anatomy, topical authority signals for SEO and AEO/GEO, and the maintenance discipline' — matching the score-3 anchor for multiple specific concrete actions.	3 / 3
Completeness	Explicitly states both what it does ('design a content hub that earns topical authority') and when to use it via explicit 'Triggers on...' and 'Also triggers when...' clauses, including failure-mode scenarios.	3 / 3
Trigger Term Quality	'Triggers on pillar content, content hub, topic cluster, topical authority, content architecture, hub and spoke, pillar page, cluster page, content silo, internal linking strategy' gives good coverage of natural terms a content strategist would actually say.	3 / 3
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	Clear niche (hub-level content architecture) with distinct triggers; unlikely to fire for the sister skills (content-strategy, seo-keyword, content-brief-authoring) it explicitly distinguishes itself from.	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: 9 days ago

Table of Contents

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