team-communication-protocols

Structured messaging protocols for agent team communication including message type selection, plan approval, shutdown procedures, and anti-patterns to avoid. Use this skill when establishing communication norms for a newly spawned team, when deciding whether to send a direct message or a broadcast, when a team-lead needs to review and approve an implementer's plan before work begins, when orchestrating a graceful team shutdown after all tasks are complete, or when debugging why teammates are not coordinating correctly at integration points.

Quality

84%

Does it follow best practices?

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Securityby

Passed

No findings from the security scan

Quality

Content

85%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 content is highly actionable with executable message templates and clear, validated multi-step workflows. Its main weakness is progressive disclosure: a bundled reference file exists but is not linked from the body.

Suggestions

Add a pointer to references/messaging-patterns.md from the body (e.g., a 'Message templates' section noting 'See references/messaging-patterns.md for ready-to-use templates') so the bundled reference is discoverable.

Consider moving the inline JSON examples that duplicate messaging-patterns.md templates into the reference, keeping only one canonical representative example in SKILL.md to reduce token cost.

Signpost the Related Skills links as optional 'next steps' to make clear they are cross-skill references rather than required reading.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The body is efficient and assumes Claude's competence, with JSON examples and tables earning their tokens; only minor instances of explanation could be trimmed.	4 / 5
Actionability	Provides copy-paste-ready JSON message templates covering message, broadcast, shutdown_request, and plan_approval_response that span the common cases.	5 / 5
Workflow Clarity	The plan-approval and shutdown protocols are clearly numbered with explicit approve/reject validation checkpoints and a reject→wait→retry feedback loop for error recovery.	5 / 5
Progressive Disclosure	The body is well-sectioned, but the bundled references/messaging-patterns.md (a template library) is never referenced or signaled from the body, leaving a navigation gap for discoverable material.	3 / 5
	Total	17 / 20 Passed

Description

83%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 is strong: it concisely names concrete capabilities and provides explicit, multi-clause trigger guidance answering both 'what' and 'when'. It is mostly distinct from sibling skills with only minor overlap risk.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	Lists several concrete capabilities ('message type selection, plan approval, shutdown procedures, and anti-patterns to avoid'), with only minor gaps in coverage versus a fully comprehensive action list.	4 / 5
Completeness	Explicitly states both what the skill does ('Structured messaging protocols for agent team communication...') and when to use it via multiple concrete 'Use this skill when...' trigger clauses.	5 / 5
Trigger Term Quality	Includes natural phrases a user would say ('send a direct message or a broadcast', 'review and approve an implementer's plan', 'graceful team shutdown', 'debugging why teammates are not coordinating'), though a few common synonyms are missing.	4 / 5
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	Occupies a clear niche (agent team communication) with distinct triggers, but has minor overlap risk with closely related sibling skills like team-composition and parallel-feature-development.	4 / 5
	Total	17 / 20 Passed

Validation

87%

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 — 14 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

Criteria	Description	Result
frontmatter_unknown_keys	Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata	Warning
relative_links	Relative link issues: 2 suspicious	Warning

	Total	14 / 16 Passed

Repository: wshobson/agents
Path: plugins/agent-teams/skills/team-communication-protocols/SKILL.md
Commit: 554237f

Reviewed: 2 days ago

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