database-sharding
Database sharding for PostgreSQL/MySQL with hash/range/directory strategies. Use for horizontal scaling, multi-tenant isolation, billions of records, or encountering wrong shard keys, hotspots, cross-shard transactions, rebalancing issues.
76
71%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
Pending
No eval scenarios have been run
Passed
No known issues
Optimize this skill with Tessl
npx tessl skill review --optimize ./plugins/database-sharding/skills/database-sharding/SKILL.mdQuality
Discovery
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.
This is a strong skill description that concisely covers specific capabilities, explicit trigger conditions, and natural user terminology. It uses third person voice appropriately and clearly delineates both what the skill does and when it should be selected. The description is well-targeted to its niche with minimal risk of conflicting with other skills.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Lists multiple specific concrete actions and concepts: database sharding, hash/range/directory strategies, horizontal scaling, multi-tenant isolation, and specific problem scenarios like wrong shard keys, hotspots, cross-shard transactions, and rebalancing issues. | 3 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both what ('Database sharding for PostgreSQL/MySQL with hash/range/directory strategies') and when ('Use for horizontal scaling, multi-tenant isolation, billions of records, or encountering wrong shard keys, hotspots, cross-shard transactions, rebalancing issues'). The 'Use for' clause serves as an explicit trigger guidance. | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Excellent coverage of natural terms users would say: 'sharding', 'PostgreSQL', 'MySQL', 'horizontal scaling', 'multi-tenant', 'billions of records', 'hotspots', 'cross-shard transactions', 'rebalancing', 'shard keys'. These are all terms a user dealing with database scaling would naturally use. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Highly distinctive with a clear niche: database sharding specifically for PostgreSQL/MySQL. The specific strategies (hash/range/directory) and problem domains (hotspots, cross-shard transactions, rebalancing) make it very unlikely to conflict with general database skills or other infrastructure skills. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 12 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
42%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
The skill has excellent progressive disclosure and reference organization, but suffers significantly from verbosity and redundancy — the same information (errors, strategies, resources) is repeated multiple times across sections. Code examples look concrete but depend on undefined template files, making them not truly executable. The workflow lacks validation checkpoints critical for a destructive operation like database sharding.
Suggestions
Eliminate redundancy: merge the 'Top 7 Critical Errors', 'Known Issues Prevention', and error references into a single concise section with a pointer to the full error catalog.
Remove the duplicate strategy comparison (appears in both 'Sharding Strategies' table and 'Configuration Summary') — keep one with the code examples.
Add explicit validation steps to the workflow: e.g., 'Run distribution analysis query before deploying', 'Verify shard balance after migration', with specific commands/queries.
Either inline the core router implementation code (at least for hash-based) or clearly note these are pseudo-usage patterns requiring the template files — currently it's ambiguous whether the code is executable.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | Extremely verbose at ~300+ lines with significant redundancy. The same errors are listed three times (Error section, Known Issues Prevention, and references). Strategy comparison table appears twice. The 'When to Load References' section and 'Resources' section heavily overlap. Much content explains concepts Claude already understands (what hotspots are, why even distribution matters). | 1 / 3 |
Actionability | Code examples are present and somewhat concrete, but they reference template files (hash-router.ts, range-router.ts) that aren't included — the actual router implementations are never shown. The TypeScript examples show usage patterns but aren't truly executable without the template dependencies. The TwoPhaseCommitTransaction class is used but never defined. | 2 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | The 'Quick Start' provides a 3-step sequence and the checklist is well-structured, but there are no explicit validation checkpoints. For a destructive/complex operation like database sharding, there's no 'verify distribution before going live' step, no rollback guidance, and no feedback loops for error recovery during implementation. The checklist is static rather than a validated workflow. | 2 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | Excellent use of progressive disclosure with clear references to external files (templates/, references/) that are well-signaled with specific 'When to Load' guidance. References are one level deep and clearly organized by use case. The main file serves as an effective overview pointing to detailed materials. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 8 / 12 Passed |
Validation
90%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 10 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
| Criteria | Description | Result |
|---|---|---|
metadata_version | 'metadata.version' is missing | Warning |
Total | 10 / 11 Passed | |
- Repository
- secondsky/claude-skills
- Commit
88da5ff
- Reviewed
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