feat(lint): expand Vale audit prefilter into a broader plugin-content harness

Deferred item from PR #85 review. Per ADR-0013: cherry-picks two low-noise
rules from trialing write-good/alex against the real corpus (VagueQualifier,
SentenceOpenerThereIs) into styles/Kyberforge rather than adopting either
package wholesale (both are tuned for blog prose and were noisy on this
repo's terse, imperative instruction files - see the ADR's rejected-rule
list). Adds a new skill-size-check pre-commit hook enforcing agentskills.io's
500-line/5,000-token SKILL.md ceiling, currently unenforced. Fixes the 28
resulting violations across 20 existing SKILL.md/agent files so the
enforcing pre-commit hook lands clean.

governance.md/CONTROLS.md were evaluated and excluded as rule sources -
they're org/CI-infrastructure controls, not prose patterns Vale can express.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01QUDczvw1H3eEeMD29Q9Lbi
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2026-07-24 20:04:10 +00:00
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# Vale audit prefilter expands into a plugin-content harness, scoped to prose-pattern rules only
Issue #84 wired Vale as a deterministic prefilter for `skill-audit`/`agent-audit`, scoped to
exactly four pattern-matchable checks (imperative description opener, vague capability wording,
generic reference-pointer padding, Copilot's dead `Use proactively` phrasing), documented only in
CONTEXT.md's "Vale audit prefilter" section — never its own ADR — and explicitly excluding body
discipline, near-miss exclusion strength, and control calibration as non-goals. This ADR records a
deferred PR #85 review item to broaden that coverage, retroactively captures #84's own rationale
(since it was never recorded as a decision in its own right), and layers the expansion on top
without reversing or weakening the original four rules.
**File scope stays the same.** `SKILL.md` plus agent files (`plugins/*/agents/*.md`,
`plugins/*/agents/*.agent.md`) only — matching the existing prefilter's globs. Skill-level
`README.md` files and `plugin.json` manifests are not added: README.md files are navigational, not
spec-governed content, and `plugin.json` is JSON, not prose Vale can meaningfully lint.
**Rule categories are prose-pattern-matchable only.** Structural, schema, and security concerns
stay out of this Vale-based harness because this repo already has dedicated tools for them:
`skill-frontmatter` (required frontmatter fields), `validate-plugins`/`validate-marketplace`
(`claude plugin validate --strict`, schema), and `gitleaks`/`detect-private-key` (secrets).
Duplicating those concerns as Vale rules would fight tools that already own them better.
**Governance docs are excluded as a rule source.** `docs/research/governance_principles/CONTROLS.md`
and `governance.md` were investigated and found to contribute nothing minable: CONTROLS.md is
org/CI-infrastructure controls (secret scanning, dependency/license scanning, agent permission
scoping, audit logging, human approval gates, periodic reviews) — none of it is a prose pattern
expressible as a Vale rule against SKILL.md/agent-file text, and what it does cover is either
already handled elsewhere (gitleaks) or genuinely out of scope for a plugin-content prose harness
(dependency/license scanning is a code-dependency concern, not skill authoring).
**Spec-derived custom rules stay mostly as-is.** Re-reading agentskills.io's
`optimizing-descriptions.md` and `skill-authoring.md`, plus `claude-code-plugins/agent-definition.md`
and `github-copilot-plugins/agent-definition.md`, found that the existing four Kyberforge rules
already cover the pattern-matchable surface those specs describe. The remaining spec guidance —
calibrating control vs. giving freedom, avoiding menus of options, coherent skill scope, moderate
detail level — is semantic judgment, already `skill-audit`'s job via LLM review, not new lintable
rules. One confirmation surfaced: Claude Code's `Use proactively` phrasing is meaningful for `.md`
agent files (it triggers auto-invocation), unlike Copilot's `.agent.md` files where it's dead
phrasing — so `KyberforgeCopilot/ProactivePhrase`'s existing `.agent.md`-only scope is correct and
must not be extended to `.md` files.
**`write-good`/`alex` are trialed, not adopted wholesale.** These built-in/third-party Vale
packages are tuned for general blog-style prose (passive voice, weasel words, wordy phrases) and
are expected to be noisy against this repo's terse, imperative instruction-file corpus. Only
individual rules proven low-noise against the existing corpus get cherry-picked into
`styles/Kyberforge`; the packages are never referenced wholesale in `BasedOnStyles`.
**A new non-Vale check closes a real gap.** `skill-authoring.md` states `SKILL.md` should stay
under 500 lines / 5,000 tokens — currently unenforced anywhere in this repo. This is a whole-file
length ceiling, not a text pattern, so it isn't a Vale rule — it becomes a new deterministic script
and pre-commit hook, sibling to the existing `skill-frontmatter` hook.
**Rules land directly in `styles/Kyberforge`, enforcing immediately.** No trial/report-only tier
is introduced (see Considered Options). The implementation pass finalizes the cherry-picked
`write-good`/`alex` rules and any new spec-derived rule wording, runs the full set against the
existing SKILL.md/agent-file corpus, fixes any resulting violations across that corpus, and lands
the rule changes and the corpus fixes as one atomic commit — the same enforcement model as the
original four rules, never a partial or opt-in state.
## Considered options
**Phased rollout via a separate trial style + config (rejected).** A `styles/KyberforgeTrial/`
directory plus a parallel `.vale.trial.ini` (mirroring the root config's globs but with
`BasedOnStyles = Kyberforge, KyberforgeTrial`) would let new rules be swept report-only via
`lint-runner`/`vale-run` before promotion into the enforcing `styles/Kyberforge` + root
`.vale.ini`. This was considered because `BasedOnStyles = Kyberforge` activates every rule file
under that directory automatically — there's no partial/opt-in application within a style, so a
rule dropped straight into `styles/Kyberforge` goes live in the blocking pre-commit hook
immediately. Rejected in favor of finalizing rules directly and fixing violations via subagent
before committing: simpler, no new trial-config machinery to build or maintain — at the cost of no
standing report-only tier for future candidate rules.
## Consequences
- `styles/Kyberforge/` will gain new rule files once the (separate, later) implementation pass
finalizes the exact cherry-picked `write-good`/`alex` rules and any new wording — none are named
by this ADR, since none have been chosen yet.
- A new pre-commit hook (name TBD by the implementer) enforces the 500-line/5,000-token `SKILL.md`
ceiling, sibling to `skill-frontmatter`.
- `styles/KyberforgeTrial/` and `.vale.trial.ini` are deliberately not created — noted here so a
future reader doesn't wonder if a trial tier was forgotten.
- Follow-up work — not part of this ADR — is: syncing and trialing `write-good`/`alex`, cherry-picking
low-noise rules, writing the size-ceiling script and hook, fixing existing corpus violations, and
the atomic commit landing all of it.