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ask-questions-if-underspecified

Clarify requirements before implementing. Use when serious doubts arise.

Quality

77%

Does it follow best practices?

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tessl review fix ./skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified/SKILL.md
SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

86%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.

The body delivers a tight, highly actionable clarification workflow with concrete templates and a worked example that leaves no ambiguity about what to do. The only deductions are minor: some redundancy across the Limitations, Anti-patterns, and When NOT to Use sections, and a confirm step that proceeds without explicit user validation.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The body is lean and imperative with no explanations of concepts Claude already knows, but "Limitations" ("Stop and ask for clarification if required inputs... are missing") and parts of "Anti-patterns" restate content already covered in "When NOT to Use" and the Goal, which could be trimmed.

4 / 5

Actionability

Concrete question templates ("Before I start, I need: (1) ..."), a fully worked reply-format example block, and explicit mechanics like the `defaults` fast-path and `1b 2a 3c` responses give copy-paste-ready guidance covering the common cases for an instruction-only skill.

5 / 5

Workflow Clarity

The four steps are clearly sequenced with a pause checkpoint ("Do not run commands, edit files... until must-have answers arrive") and a confirm step, but step 4 says to restate requirements and "then start work" without explicitly waiting for the user to validate the restatement — a minor validation gap.

4 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

No bundle files exist or are needed; the single file is well-organized into scannable sections (When to Use, When NOT to Use, Goal, Workflow, Question templates, Anti-patterns, Limitations) that make navigation easy, satisfying the simple-skill exception for progressive disclosure.

5 / 5

Total

18

/

20

Passed

Description

58%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.

The description answers what the skill does and when to use it, but in minimal terms. The trigger clause is abstract rather than phrased in natural user language, and the capability statement covers only one action, limiting discoverability and distinctiveness.

Suggestions

List the concrete actions the skill performs, e.g., "Ask 1-5 targeted clarifying questions with multiple-choice options and recommended defaults before starting implementation."

Replace the abstract "Use when serious doubts arise" with natural trigger phrases such as "Use when a request is ambiguous, requirements are unclear, or multiple plausible interpretations would materially change the outcome."

Sharpen distinctiveness by scoping the trigger away from routine discovery, e.g., "...when missing details (objective, scope, constraints, environment, safety) cannot be resolved from the request or repo."

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

"Clarify requirements before implementing" names the domain and a single concrete action, matching the anchor for 1-2 concrete actions without comprehensive coverage; it does not list several specific actions needed for a 4.

3 / 5

Completeness

Both parts are present — the what ("Clarify requirements before implementing") and an explicit when ("Use when serious doubts arise") — but the when lacks concrete trigger situations, so it does not reach the explicit trigger phrases of a 5.

4 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

"clarify" and "requirements" are relevant keywords, but the trigger "Use when serious doubts arise" is not phrasing a user would naturally say and omits common variations like "ambiguous", "unclear", or "underspecified".

3 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

"Clarify requirements" names a distinct behavior but applies to virtually any task type, so it could still overlap with planning and scoping skills; it is more specific than pure filler like "Helps with documents".

3 / 5

Total

13

/

20

Passed

Validation

93%

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

CriteriaDescriptionResult

frontmatter_unknown_keys

Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata

Warning

Total

15

/

16

Passed

Repository

sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills

Path

skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified/SKILL.md

Reviewed

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