Conciseness

The body is tight and operational — terse message rules, compact examples, no explanation of git or conventional-commit concepts beyond a 9-line type table. It sits at the score-4 anchor (efficient, minor trimming possible): the Types list largely restates knowledge Claude already has, the opening paragraph repeats the frontmatter description, and the verbose counterexample block is slightly long for the point it makes.

Actionability

Guidance is concrete and executable: a message template, hard rules ("under 60 characters", "no trailing period", "cap it at two short sentences or three bullets"), specific commands ("run `make checks`", "inspect staged files and `git diff`"), and good/with-body/bad examples that cover the common cases. This matches the score-5 anchor for an instruction-only skill with fully actionable, example-backed guidance.

Workflow Clarity

The three-step workflow is clearly sequenced, the pre-commit check acts as an explicit validation step, and the Notes section defines the failure path ("ask whether to fix or proceed") — matching the score-4 anchor's 'clear sequence with most checkpoints'. It falls short of score 5 because validation is conditional ("if available") with no fallback, and there is no post-commit verification (e.g., confirming the commit landed via `git log`).

Progressive Disclosure

The body is well-sectioned (Workflow, Message Rules, Types, Splitting Criteria, Examples, Options, Notes) and nothing that belongs in a separate file is inlined, matching the score-4 anchor (good structure, content appropriately placed, minor gaps). The skill exceeds the 50-line threshold where well-organized sections alone warrant a 5, and there is minor redundancy between the opening paragraph, the Usage section, and the frontmatter.

Specificity

The description lists five concrete actions — "Writes brief conventional-commit messages, runs pre-commit checks, stages changes, commits them, and proposes splitting when the diff mixes concerns" — giving comprehensive coverage of the skill's capabilities with no generic filler. This matches the score-5 anchor (multiple specific concrete actions, comprehensive) and exceeds the score-4 anchor, which would imply minor coverage gaps.

Completeness

Both questions are explicitly answered: the "what" is the full action list, and the "when" is a concrete "Use when the user asks to commit, stage and commit, write a commit message, or split a change into atomic commits" clause with concrete trigger phrases. This is a direct match for the score-5 anchor and clearly above score 4, where the "when" would be less specific.

Trigger Term Quality

Trigger phrases are natural — "asks to commit, stage and commit, write a commit message, or split a change into atomic commits" — covering the main phrasings a user would actually say. It falls just short of the score-5 anchor because common variations like "make a commit", "commit my changes", or "amend a commit" are missing, but it clearly exceeds the score-3 anchor (missing common variations).

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

The niche is clear — git commit authoring with conventional-commit formatting, pre-checks, and atomic-split proposals — and every trigger phrase is specific to that niche, matching the score-5 anchor (clear niche, distinct triggers, minimal conflict risk). It is more focused than the score-4 anchor's 'minor overlap risk with closely related skills' case.