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thrillmadethrillmade/agent-skills/skills/skill-frontmatter-quality/SKILL.md

skill-frontmatter-quality

Skill3 starsChanged 8 days agoMITView on GitHub

Review SKILL.md frontmatter for trigger surface, specificity, voice, and completeness. Apply on PRs that add or modify a skills/*/SKILL.md file. Catches descriptions that won't be discoverable, that wave at the topic instead of naming concrete buckets, that drift from the prescriptive house voice, or that omit fields downstream tools depend on.

The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

1 rule. About 0 are common, 0 are distinctive, and 1 is very specific to this project.

  • ≈0

    Common · estimate

    Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

  • ≈0

    Distinctive · estimate

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 1

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Very specific:

    When reviewing a PR that adds or modifies a skills/*/SKILL.md, surface issues from these buckets only:

    line 13

≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Skill frontmatter quality

A SKILL.md description: field is the only thing an agent runtime sees when deciding whether to load the skill. If the description is vague, missing trigger keywords, or wanders off the house voice, the skill won't be discovered and the work that went into the body is wasted.

When reviewing a PR that adds or modifies a skills/*/SKILL.md, surface issues from these buckets only:

Flag these

  1. Missing trigger surface. The description does not name the situation, file type, or user action that should load the skill. An actionable description leads with the imperative verb ("Flag", "Review", "Use when…") and names the artifact ("PRs that change…", "frontend code with…"). Quote the offending description and propose a rewrite.
  2. Topic-not-trigger. The description names the topic the skill addresses but not the moment of use. "Reviews code for performance issues" is topic-only; "Apply to PRs that add database queries, batch jobs, or render-blocking JS" is a trigger.
  3. Restates the name. The description is a verbose synonym of the directory name. name: test-discipline + description: "Skill for test discipline" carries no signal an agent can search on. Demand concrete buckets.
  4. Voice drift. The house voice in this catalog is terse, prescriptive, second-person imperative. Flag deviations: "we recommend", "you should consider", marketing copy ("supercharge your reviews"), exclamation marks, emoji in descriptions, hedging ("might want to", "could be useful").
  5. Frontmatter-body mismatch. The frontmatter promises one thing (e.g. "flag X, Y, Z") and the body delivers a different list. Quote both. The description is the contract — fix whichever side is wrong.
  6. kind that does not match what the skill judges. A skill about prose carrying kind: rule can be the sole citation for a finding about code behaviour, which SPEC §2.2 reserves for rule skills. Check the body against the value: code correctness → rule, shipped prose → writing, the rendered surface → design. An absent kind means rule, so omitting it on a prose skill has the same effect as declaring it wrongly.

Do not surface

  • YAML parse errors, missing required fields, missing H1, name-directory mismatch — the validate-skills.yml workflow already covers these mechanically. Defer.
  • Description length on its own. A 60-char description with strong trigger surface is fine; a 400-char description that wanders is not. Critique substance, not character count.
  • Rewriting wholesale unless the description fails multiple buckets above. A single targeted fix beats a redesign.
  • Body content unrelated to what the frontmatter promises. Body-only critiques belong in a different skill.

How to phrase findings

  • Quote the offending description: line verbatim before critiquing it.
  • Show the rewrite, not just the rule. "Replace Helps with database stuff with Flag PRs that add raw SQL outside the query layer or change index definitions."
  • One concrete issue per comment. No bundling unrelated frontmatter nits.

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Your trail

Files you open will collect here, so you can find them again.

Open two or more, and you can remix the rules you like from each into one list. Kept in this browser only.

Now do this for your own.

Bring your CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or skills. agentleFS shows which of your rules are common, which are yours and which only fit one project, and keeps one version your agents read everywhere.