tessl-labs/graceful-degradation
Every external call needs a timeout, every timeout needs a fallback — resilience patterns for HTTP, databases, and third-party services
88
90%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
85%
4.72xAverage score across 5 eval scenarios
Passed
No known issues
Quality
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 clearly articulates specific resilience patterns (timeouts, fallbacks, circuit breakers, retry with backoff, partial responses) and provides explicit trigger conditions. The description uses proper third-person voice and includes natural keywords that users would actually use when working with external service calls.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Lists multiple specific concrete actions: 'timeouts, fallbacks, circuit breakers, retry with backoff, partial responses' and specifies the target domain clearly as 'databases, APIs, or external services'. | 3 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both what ('Apply resilience patterns — timeouts, fallbacks, circuit breakers, retry with backoff, partial responses') and when ('Triggers on any code that makes HTTP requests, database queries, or calls to third-party services'). | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Includes natural keywords users would say: 'HTTP requests', 'database queries', 'third-party services', 'APIs', 'external services', 'timeout', 'fallback', 'circuit breakers', 'retry'. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Clear niche focused specifically on resilience patterns for external calls; distinct triggers around HTTP requests, database queries, and third-party services make it unlikely to conflict with general coding or other skills. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 12 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
77%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
This is a strong, highly actionable skill with excellent executable code examples across multiple languages and clear workflow guidance. The main weakness is length—the content could benefit from splitting advanced patterns (circuit breaker, retry utilities) into separate reference files, and trimming some explanatory text that assumes less of Claude's baseline knowledge.
Suggestions
Trim introductory explanations about why timeouts matter—Claude understands production failure modes; jump straight to the rules
Consider extracting the CircuitBreaker class and withRetry utility into a separate PATTERNS.md reference file to reduce main file length
Remove or condense the 'WRONG' examples since Claude can infer what not to do from the 'CORRECT' examples
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | The content is mostly efficient with good code examples, but includes some unnecessary explanation (e.g., explaining why missing timeouts cause outages, which Claude would know). The introductory paragraphs could be trimmed. | 2 / 3 |
Actionability | Excellent executable code examples across multiple languages (TypeScript, Python, Go) and technologies (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, SQLite). All examples are copy-paste ready with correct syntax and real library APIs. | 3 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | Clear numbered steps in 'Applying These Rules' section with explicit validation via 'Quick audit of existing code' checklist. The progression from timeouts → fallbacks → retries → circuit breakers is logical and well-sequenced. | 3 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | Content is well-organized with clear sections and a summary checklist, but it's a long monolithic file (~350 lines). The verifiers are referenced at the end, but detailed patterns like circuit breaker implementation could be split into separate reference files. | 2 / 3 |
Total | 10 / 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 |
|---|---|---|
frontmatter_unknown_keys | Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata | Warning |
Total | 10 / 11 Passed | |
Reviewed
Table of Contents