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hardware-in-loop-reference

Use when scoping an embedded hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) rig or reading an automotive, aerospace or industrial HIL report: MIL, SIL, PIL and HIL stages, NI, dSPACE, Vector and Speedgoat stacks, CAN, LIN, FlexRay and Ethernet emulation, fault injection and ISO 26262, DO-178C and IEC 61508 evidence.

Quality

74%

Does it follow best practices?

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SecuritybySnyk

Passed

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tessl review fix ./plugins/qa-embedded/skills/hardware-in-loop-reference/SKILL.md

The canonical home for this skill is testland/hardware-in-loop-reference

SKILL.md
Quality
Evals
Security

Quality

Content

57%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.

A dense, accurate reference whose tables (fault-injection patterns, vendor stacks, standards mapping, anti-patterns) are genuinely useful and specific. It is weakened by a Wikipedia-derived explanation of a known concept, recurring citation meta-commentary, ~240 lines of inlined tabular detail with no progressive-disclosure structure, and the absence of any sequenced decision workflow for its two stated use cases.

Suggestions

Trim the Overview's Wikipedia quotation and the repeated 'gated - cite by stable ID' meta-commentary; Claude already knows what HIL is, so keep only the one-sentence in-practice definition.

Move the vendor-stack, bus-protocol, and safety-standard tables into reference files (e.g., references/vendors.md, references/protocols.md, references/standards.md) and keep SKILL.md as a compact overview with clearly signaled one-level-deep links.

Add a short numbered decision procedure for each core use case (scoping a rig: list ECU buses -> pick protocol cards -> pick vendor by team tool fluency -> define fault battery from ISO 26262-5; reading a report: map vendor terms -> check evidence list -> flag anti-patterns) so the reference doubles as a workflow.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

The Overview spends ~10 lines quoting Wikipedia ('a technique that is used in the development and testing of complex real-time embedded systems') to explain a concept Claude already knows, and citation meta-commentary recurs ('Vendor product pages are largely gated... cited by stable ID', 'Cited by stable ID - the standards are gated, not WebFetchable'). The tables are dense and earn their tokens, but the known-concept explanation and repeated meta-notes are unnecessary padding, placing this at anchor 3 rather than 4.

3 / 5

Actionability

Concrete and specific throughout: an executable CAPL testcase ('Test_Brake_Latency()' using SetSignal, TestWaitForTimeout, TestStepPass), a fault-injection table mapping each pattern to what it 'Detects' ('Bus-off' -> 'Bus-off recovery state machine'), a test-evidence checklist, and anti-patterns each paired with a 'Fix'. Anchor 4 rather than 5 because the VeriStand example is a schematic sketch ('WaitUntilSettled Motor/Torque == 50.0 (tolerance 5.0, timeout 200 ms)') rather than copy-paste ready, and no runnable commands are given for the report-reading use case.

4 / 5

Workflow Clarity

Sections are coherently ordered (pattern -> V-model stages -> vendors -> protocols -> fault injection -> standards -> evidence -> anti-patterns -> limitations), but no sequenced procedure exists for either core use case - there is no 'when scoping a rig, first determine buses, then...' - and no validation checkpoints anywhere. Anchor 3 fits: topical organization stands in for workflow, but explicit steps and checkpoints are missing.

3 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

A single ~240-line file with well-labeled sections but no bundle files at all; everything is inline, including the vendor, protocol, and safety-standard tables that would naturally live in references/. This matches anchor 3 ('content that should be separate is inline') - not 2 because section structure is good, not 4 because no one-level-deep reference structure exists, and the under-50-lines exception for scoring 5 clearly does not apply.

3 / 5

Total

13

/

20

Passed

Description

78%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.

A strong, domain-dense description with explicit 'Use when' trigger guidance and highly distinctive terminology that minimizes conflict risk. Its only weakness is that the capability ('what') is conveyed as a topic enumeration rather than an explicit action statement.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

Names two concrete actions - 'scoping an embedded hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) rig' and 'reading an automotive, aerospace or industrial HIL report' - plus a comprehensive topic list (MIL/SIL/PIL/HIL stages, vendor stacks, bus protocols, safety standards). It sits between anchors 4 and 5: only two verbs carry the action list while the remainder enumerates topics rather than actions, so 'several specific actions with minor gaps' (4) fits better than 'multiple specific concrete actions' (5).

4 / 5

Completeness

'Use when scoping... or reading...' provides an explicit and specific 'when' clause, and the colon-delimited topic list conveys the 'what' (a reference covering stages, vendors, protocols, fault injection, certification evidence). Not 5 because the capability is never stated directly as an action (no 'Provides reference for...' equivalent) - the 'what' must be inferred from the coverage enumeration; not 3 because trigger guidance is explicit rather than weakly implied.

4 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

Dense with terms practitioners actually say: 'hardware-in-the-loop', 'HIL', 'fault injection', 'ISO 26262', 'DO-178C', 'IEC 61508', vendors 'NI, dSPACE, Vector and Speedgoat', and buses 'CAN, LIN, FlexRay and Ethernet'. Not anchor 5 because a few natural phrasings users would say ('HIL testing', 'test bench', 'plant model', 'real-time simulator') are absent; clearly above anchor 3's 'some relevant keywords'.

4 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

A clear niche with distinct triggers: 'MIL, SIL, PIL and HIL stages', 'Speedgoat', 'CAN, LIN, FlexRay and Ethernet emulation', 'ISO 26262, DO-178C and IEC 61508 evidence' would almost never collide with generic embedded, testing, or documentation skills. Minimal conflict risk, matching anchor 5.

5 / 5

Total

17

/

20

Passed

Validation

100%

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation — 16 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

No warnings or errors.

Repository

testland/qa

Path

plugins/qa-embedded/skills/hardware-in-loop-reference/SKILL.md

Reviewed

Table of Contents

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