Defame1297
edcc57c0d6
Two related simplification-audit findings, bundled because they edit some of the same skill-audit files and splitting would fragment single-file diffs. Finding 10: delete 48 per-skill/reference README.md files (they restated SKILL.md in narrative form and no agent ever loads them) plus 2 scaffold templates. Drop the README criterion from skill-audit's file-structure.md and finding-criteria.md, and the README-generation step from skill-author's new-skill.sh; update new-skill.bats to match. Plugin-root READMEs are kept intentionally, out of scope. Finding 12: strip historical ADR-0020/ADR-0023 citations and changelog-style narration from model-facing skill content across kyberforge and git plugin skills. Delete skill-author's one-time retrofit.md migration guide and its references. Some ADR-0023 tags were not narration but check-rtk-prefix's required opt-out marker for intentionally-bare git commands -- those were restored, not stripped. Mirror re-synced and full pre-commit/pre-push suite verified green. Refs: SIMPLIFICATION-AUDIT.md findings 10, 12 Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YR2CjVumUbEGWcMikcoXBD
106 lines
5.5 KiB
Markdown
106 lines
5.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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source_keys:
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- context7-websites-code-claude
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- claude-code-plugins-docs
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- claude-code-subagents-docs
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- context7-github-en-copilot
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- github-custom-agents-configuration
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---
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# Body, Delegation and Comment Discipline Reference
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Upstream source: Claude Code subagent and plugin references, GitHub Copilot custom-agents
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configuration. House contract: the context budget.
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Read this when judging the **body**, **delegation** and **comment-discipline** dimensions.
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## The core test
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For every sentence in the body, ask: **"Would the agent get this wrong without this instruction?"**
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If no — cut it. The agent already knows it from general training. Adding it wastes tokens and
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dilutes the signal of what matters.
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## Agents take no body word gate
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A skill body is gated at 600 words SUGGESTION / 900 FAIL; an agent body is deliberately gated at
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nothing. The two are not the same construct: a skill body is loaded into the caller's live
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context and competes with the conversation already there, while an agent body *becomes* the system
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prompt of a fresh context that has nothing else in it. The rationale for the 900-word ceiling does
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not transfer, so:
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- **Never report an agent body as too long on a word count.** There is no number to cite.
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- **Never add such a gate to `scripts/validate.sh`.** `tests/validate.bats` pins its absence with a
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body far past 900 words that must still pass, and adding one would contradict the ADR.
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- The one length signal that does apply is the Copilot runtime's 30,000-character body limit, which
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`validate.sh` already reports as a SUGGESTION because content past it is silently truncated.
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Length is judged through the delegation check below instead, which is the defect a word count was
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standing in for anyway.
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## The delegation check
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A plugin-scope agent is a single `.apm/agents/<name>.agent.md` file with no sibling `references/`
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directory. It cannot progressively disclose to itself — it can only delegate to skills. So a
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procedure spelled out in an agent body that a skill the agent invokes already owns is not a
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shortcut: it is a second copy of that procedure, and the second copy drifts. This is the
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characteristic agent defect, the way a stale README row is the characteristic skill defect.
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**An agent body that restates a procedure owned by a skill it can invoke is a FAIL.** The Fix is
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always the same shape: invoke `<skill>` instead.
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How to apply it: for each procedural block in the body — a rule list, a numbered sequence, a
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constraint table — ask which skill owns that procedure. If the agent names that skill anywhere (its
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dispatch table, its routing prose, its frontmatter), the block is a restatement and the skill is
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already there to be invoked.
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Worked example. The three `*-orchestrate` agents exist to compose domain skills — `git-orchestrate`
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(933 body words), `gitea-orchestrate` (1,199) and `apm-orchestrate` (1,080) — so any step they
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spell out that the composed skill already owns is the defect. `git-orchestrate:24-31` carries a
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"Hard rules" list (Conventional Commits types, atomic commits, never commit secrets, git trailers)
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that `git-commits` owns and that `git-orchestrate:44` routes to by name; `:39` concedes the point
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outright, noting the sub-skills "carry their own local copies of these rules". Two copies, one
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authority, and nothing keeping them in step.
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What is **not** a finding under this rule, because no skill owns it:
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- The dispatch table itself — which operation routes to which skill.
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- Safety gates the agent enforces before dispatching, and refusals it makes on its own authority.
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- The input contract and the structured output the agent's caller consumes.
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- Session state the agent carries across skill invocations.
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## What the body is for
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Include what the fresh context lacks:
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- A direct role instruction opening the prompt: `You are a [role]. When invoked, [action].`
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- One bounded job, stated so the agent knows what it must refuse.
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- The dispatch, gates, inputs and outputs listed above.
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- **Error handling** — what the agent does on malformed, missing or contradictory input: stop and
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report, or degrade to a named fallback. Absent it, the agent invents a recovery, and a
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subagent's invented recovery is invisible to its caller until the output is wrong.
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- Non-obvious environment facts and project-specific conventions it cannot infer.
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- One default per decision point with one escape hatch.
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Do not include at all:
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- Concepts the agent already knows (what JSON is, how HTTP works, what a CSV is)
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- Exhaustive option lists — pick a default; the agent does not benefit from choosing
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- Steps the agent handles independently — over-specifying leads to unproductive paths
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- Restatements of the description, which is already in context
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## Comment discipline
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Inspect every comment block in the YAML frontmatter and apply the core test to each: *would the
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agent get this wrong without this comment?* Template scaffolding — `# Optional. <long
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explanation>`, more than a line or two of inline guidance per field — belongs to development, not
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to a shipped file. At plugin/APM scope the stakes are higher than tidiness: `apm compile` copies
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frontmatter verbatim to every target, `<!-- ... -->` is not valid YAML, and `validate.sh` FAILs a
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frontmatter block that still contains one.
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## Where the criteria live
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Every FAIL and SUGGESTION criterion for these dimensions is in `references/finding-criteria.md`,
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which Step 3 reads on every run. This file is the reasoning behind them, loaded only when that file
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puts the body, delegation or comment-discipline dimension in play.
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