Defame1297
57654c4b02
Four claims in shipped agent-facing docs did not match verified behaviour.
These are read as ground truth by agents in other repos, so each was
reproduced against vale 3.15.2 before rewriting:
- CONTEXT.md and `vale-config/SKILL.md` said both `>` and `|` block scalars
break the description scope. `|` does not — it lints normally and fires every
alert, while `>` yields zero. An agent following the old text would rewrite a
working `|` description into a plain multi-line scalar, which genuinely does
break, inverting the intended remediation. Both now name the forms that do
break and state that `|` does not.
- CONTEXT.md and ADR-0013 described the size hook as failing only above 500
lines, omitting the 2900-word gate it also enforces. Both now describe the
pair and state that `validate.sh` checks the same two.
- ADR-0014 recorded an accepted residual — a wholesale `assets/` deletion going
unflagged — that commit 14c2c91 closed. Left as the point-in-time record and
amended with an update describing the union-with-tag-manifest mechanism,
following the amendment precedent in ADR-0005.
- `vale-config/SKILL.md` asserted a fresh `.vale.ini` fails until `vale sync`
runs, contradicting its own note that built-in styles need no download. The
claim is now scoped to package styles; this repo's two configs declare no
packages and lint clean with zero syncs.
Also repoints AGENTS.md at the seven `gitea:*` skills — the `bin:gitea` route
it named no longer exists.
Refs: #85
121 lines
9.4 KiB
Markdown
121 lines
9.4 KiB
Markdown
# 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 (`**/agents/*.md`,
|
|
`**/*.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). "Enforcing immediately" holds only because every rule in
|
|
both styles is `level: error`: Vale's exit code keys on `error`-level alerts alone, so a
|
|
`warning`- or `suggestion`-level rule prints an alert and still exits 0, and pre-commit suppresses
|
|
output from hooks that pass — such a rule is invisible and blocks nothing. Every Vale alert is
|
|
therefore a FAIL, in the audit skills and in the blocking pre-commit hook alike, with no ignorable
|
|
tier; that matches every other gate in this repo (shellcheck, the test suite,
|
|
conventional-pre-commit). 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. Note that the first implementation shipped
|
|
graded severities (`error`/`warning`/`suggestion`) and thereby recreated the rejected option by
|
|
accident: the five non-`error` rules never affected an exit code and never surfaced output through
|
|
a passing pre-commit hook, so they were a report-only tier that reported to nobody. Flattening
|
|
every rule to `level: error` is what actually implements this decision.
|
|
|
|
## Consequences
|
|
|
|
- `styles/Kyberforge/` gained one new rule file, cherry-picked from `write-good`/`alex` as
|
|
low-noise against this repo's corpus: `SentenceOpenerThereIs.yml` (22 hits across 273 held-out
|
|
markdown files; both in-corpus hits were clean rewrites, needing no suppression).
|
|
- A second candidate, `VagueQualifier.yml`, was cherry-picked and then dropped. Against the 41
|
|
skill/agent files it hit twice: one marginal real finding (`prototype/SKILL.md`, "very different"
|
|
→ "fundamentally different") and one false positive (`caveman/SKILL.md`, which *quotes* `of
|
|
course` as an example of filler — a mention, not a use) that no rewrite could clear, forcing the
|
|
repo's only Vale suppression comments. Of its 15 held-out hits, 9 were in `docs/research/examples/`
|
|
(out-of-scope upstream material) and the remaining 6 were the word "very" in two idioms in a
|
|
single research doc, each already adjacent to the hard number carrying the fact. One marginal
|
|
catch does not pay for a permanent suppression, so the rule is deleted and this ADR's
|
|
"cherry-picked rules" is one rule, not two.
|
|
- A new pre-commit hook, `skill-size-check` (`scripts/skill-size-check.sh`), enforces the
|
|
500-line/5,000-token `SKILL.md` ceiling, sibling to `skill-frontmatter`. Both halves of that
|
|
ceiling are blocking gates, not just the line count: `MAX_LINES=500`, and `MAX_WORDS=2900` as a
|
|
word-count proxy for the 5,000-token limit (calibrated from this repo's measured ~1.6-1.7 tokens
|
|
per word — `wc -w` is not BPE tokenization). Either one exceeded fails the hook. Both are
|
|
inclusive: a file at exactly 500 lines or exactly 2,900 words passes, and only one past a ceiling
|
|
fails. `skill-audit/scripts/validate.sh` enforces the same pair on the same inclusive terms, so
|
|
the audit and the commit hook cannot disagree about whether a given `SKILL.md` is over size.
|
|
- `styles/KyberforgeTrial/` and `.vale.trial.ini` were deliberately not created — noted here so a
|
|
future reader doesn't wonder if a trial tier was forgotten.
|
|
- The styles-portability question — whether `styles/` and `.vale.ini` should move into
|
|
`plugins/lint/` so the prefilter also works for repos that install `kyberforge@holocron` as an
|
|
external plugin, rather than living at this repo's root — was deliberately deferred, not fixed,
|
|
in this pass. This repo-root placement remains intentional: this ADR's "File scope stays the
|
|
same" framing is specific to Kyberforge's own authoring conventions in this repo, not a generic
|
|
`lint`-plugin feature. Portability is a known limitation, tracked for a separate future session,
|
|
not silently forgotten.
|
|
|
|
**What this ADR's implementation pass did:** synced and trialed `write-good`/`alex` against the
|
|
existing SKILL.md/agent-file corpus, cherry-picked the one low-noise rule above into
|
|
`styles/Kyberforge`, wrote `scripts/skill-size-check.sh` and its pre-commit hook, fixed the
|
|
resulting corpus violations, and landed the rule changes and corpus fixes as one atomic commit —
|
|
matching the enforcement model described above (no partial or opt-in state), with every rule at
|
|
`level: error` so that model is real rather than nominal.
|