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
88 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
88 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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source_keys:
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- agentskills-spec
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- agentskills-optimizing-descriptions
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---
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# Description Quality Reference
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Upstream source: agentskills.io — optimizing-descriptions, specification.
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House contract: the context budget. The house contract is narrower than the spec
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rather than a reinterpretation of it: where both speak, both must be satisfied.
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## Why the description is the expensive part
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At startup an agent loads only the `name` and `description` of every installed skill. The body is
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never seen until the skill triggers. The description therefore carries the entire triggering
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burden **and** is paid for in every session, whether the skill fires or not.
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A second cost is less obvious and is a correctness hazard rather than a token cost: a description
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that summarises the workflow is a shortcut the agent takes *instead of* reading the body. A
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measured failure upstream — a description saying "code review between tasks" — produced one review
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where the body's flowchart specified two.
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## Step 0 — establish which contract applies
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Read the frontmatter before judging a single word.
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- **`disable-model-invocation: true`** — the skill is hand-invoked. Its description is never
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matched against user intent, so it is not a routing string. It carries **one plain human-facing
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sentence** stating what the skill does. Audit it for that and nothing else. Reporting a missing
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trigger clause, a missing boundary clause or absent indirect triggers on a hand-invoked skill is
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a wrong finding, not a strict one.
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- **No such flag** — the skill is model-invoked and the rest of this file applies.
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## The three-part shape
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A model-invoked description carries exactly three things:
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1. **Trigger clause.** When to invoke, phrased imperatively: `Use when ...`. Not `This skill ...` —
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the agent is deciding whether to act, not reading a catalogue entry.
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2. **At most one capability clause.** What it does, in one clause. Never an enumeration.
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3. **Boundary clause.** Compressed form: `Not <thing> -> <skill-name>.` The target must resolve to
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a real skill directory or agent file in the authoring source. `validate.sh` checks that
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deterministically and grades it by notation: an unresolved `/name` or arrow target is an ERROR
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and reaches the report as a Structure FAIL, while an unresolved prose-form target ("use `y`
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instead") is only a SUGGESTION unless a second target in the same sentence resolves. Take the
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script's tier as given and report it once, under Structure.
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Everything else belongs in the body or in `README.md`.
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## Indirect triggers — conditional, never blanket
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Add "even if the user doesn't say X" **only where the user's natural phrasing genuinely omits the
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domain word.** True for the `gitea-*` family: people say "create an issue", not "create a Gitea
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issue". False for `git-commits`: nobody asks for a commit without saying commit. A blanket
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indirect-trigger clause on a skill whose domain word is unavoidable is padding charged to every
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session.
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## Near-miss exclusions
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Add a boundary clause only where a sibling skill could plausibly steal the activation. Use strong
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near-misses — queries that share keywords but need something different — not weak ones ("write a
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fibonacci function"). One boundary clause per genuine near-miss; a list of four is enumeration
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wearing a boundary's clothes.
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## Before / after
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```yaml
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# FAIL — enumeration first, mechanics as the opener, a blanket indirect trigger,
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# and 300+ characters of it preloaded into every session forever.
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description: >
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Analyze CSV and tabular data files — compute summary statistics, add derived
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columns, generate charts, and clean messy data. Use when the user has a CSV,
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TSV, or Excel file and wants to explore, transform, or visualize the data,
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even if they don't explicitly mention "CSV" or "analysis."
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# PASS — trigger, one capability clause, boundary. The four verbs the FAIL
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# version enumerates are the body's job; the router cannot act on them.
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description: >
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Use when the user has a CSV, TSV, or Excel file and wants it explored,
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transformed, or charted. Not schema design -> data-model.
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```
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(`data-model` is illustrative. In a real description the target has to resolve.)
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The FAIL and SUGGESTION criteria for this dimension live in `references/finding-criteria.md`,
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which Step 3 loads on every run.
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