holocron/plugins/kyberforge/skills/skill-audit/SKILL.md

name, description, allowed-tools, metadata

name	description	allowed-tools	metadata
skill-audit	Use when the user wants to review a skill they wrote, says "audit this skill", "check if my skill follows best practices", "review my SKILL.md", or wants to know if a skill is ready to ship — even if they don't use the word "audit". Also invoke proactively after directly hand-editing a skill's files outside skill-author — an unaudited hand-edit is the same risk as unreviewed code. Audits a skill directory against the agentskills.io specification — structural checks plus qualitative review of description quality, body discipline, patterns, formatting, file structure, scripts, and internal consistency, plus a provenance chain check. Produces a compact findings report (findings only, no PASS noise) with Why and Fix per finding, suitable for agent handoff to /skill-improve or human auditability. Do not use to fix application code bugs or perform general code review unrelated to skill quality. Do not use when the user wants improvements applied — use /skill-improve instead.	Bash Read	category source_keys factory agentskills-home agentskills-spec agentskills-best-practices agentskills-optimizing-descriptions agentskills-using-scripts

Gotchas

• Do not output PASS/FAIL per check while auditing — gather findings internally and surface them only in the Step 4 report. Narrating each check as you go is the default failure mode here.

Step 1 — Structural validation

bash scripts/validate.sh <skill-dir>
bash scripts/validate-provenance.sh <skill-dir>
scripts/vale-wrap.sh <skill-dir>/SKILL.md

Note any structural FAILs — they will appear in the report as a ### Structure dimension. If the script cannot execute (python3 unavailable, Bash denied, or permission error), perform structural checks manually: name format, name matches directory, description length ≤1024 chars, SKILL.md ≤500 lines and ≤2770 words (the word count is a proxy for the ~5,000-token ceiling, and blocks a commit exactly like the line count does), no unfilled FILL IN: placeholders, scripts executable and free of interactive prompts.

Note any Provenance FAILs and INFO findings from validate-provenance.sh — they surface in the report as a ### Provenance dimension (separate from ### Structure). The script embeds full FAIL/INFO format with Why and Fix per finding; surface them verbatim.

vale-wrap.sh ships inside this skill's own scripts/ — resolve it relative to this skill's directory the same way scripts/validate.sh is resolved above, so the invocation works whether this skill is running from this repo or from an installed plugin cache. Pass no --config: handed none, the wrapper loads its own sibling assets/vale/.vale.ini, located from the script's path rather than from the cwd. Adding an explicit relative --config breaks exactly the case the self-location covers — a resolved script path plus an unresolved config path yields E100 Runtime error ... does not exist, exit 2, which the fallback below then misreads as "vale unavailable". It applies that config's Kyberforge style — a deterministic prefilter for a subset of the Description/Patterns/Body dimensions below, not a replacement for Step 3. Every Vale alert is a FAIL — all rules are graded error — so report each one citing its rule ID (e.g. Kyberforge.DescriptionOpener). Skip and fall back to Step 3 judgment if the vale binary is unavailable. If Vale reports 0 files scanned, treat the pass as NOT RUN — not as clean — and fall back to full Step 3 judgment for the dimensions it would have covered.

Step 2 — Read all skill files

Read every file in the skill directory: SKILL.md, README.md (if present), all files in scripts/, references/, assets/, and tests/. Skip binary files only. Do not skip text files — internal consistency checks require the full picture.

Step 3 — Qualitative audit

Work through each dimension internally. Collect findings only; report them in Step 4. Cite file and line number for every finding.

Description

Vale's Kyberforge.DescriptionOpener ("This skill..." openers) and Kyberforge.VagueWording (filler like "helps with", "utilize") alerts from Step 1 — both FAILs — cover imperative phrasing and known vague-wording filler directly; report them as findings without re-deriving by judgment. The rest is still a judgment call:

• Action-verb opening: does the description start with a verb ("Audits...", "Reviews...", "Validates...")? Vale's Kyberforge.DescriptionOpener alert only catches the literal "This skill..." pattern — confirming an arbitrary opening word is genuinely a strong verb still requires judgment.
• Specificity beyond the filler blocklist: are capabilities stated precisely ("parses OpenAPI specs") or genuinely vaguely ("handles files")?
• Indirect triggers: does it cover cases where the user doesn't name the domain directly?
• Near-miss exclusions: are "Do not use when..." clauses present if a near-miss skill could steal activations?
• Length: under 1024 characters?

If a description finding is borderline or the distinction between PASS and FAIL is unclear, read references/description-quality.md.

Body discipline

For each sentence in the body, apply: "Would the agent get this wrong without this sentence?" Flag any that answer "no" as padding.

• Defaults not menus: every decision point gives one default + one escape hatch, not a list of options
• Why rationale: include/exclude rules explain why, not just what
• Control calibration: prescriptive for fragile or critical sequences (e.g. a script invocation where flag order or exact arguments must not change); flexible where multiple approaches are valid

Vale's Kyberforge.SentenceOpenerThereIs alert from Step 1 (FAIL — sentences starting with "There is"/"There are") covers pattern-matchable body-wide filler directly; report it as a finding without re-deriving by judgment.

If uncertain whether a sentence is padding or whether a control decision is correctly calibrated, read references/body-discipline.md.

Patterns

Check each pattern is appropriate and correctly formed:

• Gotchas: placed near the top; each entry is a specific fact that defies a reasonable assumption — not a general tip
• Prescriptive sequence: inner code fences escaped as \``` when nested inside a markdown block
• Checklists: used for multi-step workflows, not single steps
• Conditional references: specific trigger stated ("If X, read references/file.md") — not a generic "see references/". Vale's Kyberforge.PaddingPhrase alert from Step 1 flags the generic phrasing directly; other malformed conditional-reference forms still require judgment.
• Output templates: present when the agent must produce a specific format; absent otherwise

File structure

• Permitted directories: scripts/, references/, assets/, tests/; flag any other unlisted directory as FAIL — the spec allows additional dirs but this skill permits only these four to keep skills focused
• scripts/ contains only executable code agents can run; test files (.bats, *_test.*, test_*.sh) in scripts/ are a FAIL — they belong in tests/
• No non-spec files at the skill root (e.g. META.md, extra config files outside permitted directories)
• Optional directories contain real content — not just unfilled placeholder READMEs
• README.md present and accurately describes the skill and its files
• No cross-plugin path references in SKILL.md, scripts/, references/, or assets/ — paths using ../, ../../, or absolute repo paths (e.g. plugins/<plugin>/skills/<other-skill>/, or its APM-native equivalent .apm/skills/<other-skill>/) break when the plugin is installed to a cache; flag any found
• references/sources.md is exempt from the cross-plugin path check — Research doc: fields are development-only provenance pointers, not runtime references; they intentionally reference paths outside the skill directory and are expected to be non-resolvable after plugin install; validate-provenance.sh handles this gracefully by silently skipping upstream checks when those paths don't resolve
• tests/ is exempt from the cross-plugin path check — test files are dev-only and may reference repo-level test infrastructure (e.g. a shared tests/test_helper/). This dependency must be declared in tests/README.md; flag if tests exist but tests/README.md is absent or does not document the dependency

Formatting

• Heading levels consistent: H2 for main sections, H3 for subsections
• Code blocks fenced with a language tag where applicable (bash, markdown, python)
• Consistent whitespace: blank line between sections, consistent list indentation
• No broken relative paths in file references

Scripts

• No interactive TTY prompts (read, input(), readline)
• --help exposed with concise usage
• Data to stdout, diagnostics to stderr
• Idempotent ("create if not exists")
• Meaningful exit codes documented in --help
• --dry-run present for destructive operations

Internal consistency

• SKILL.md steps match what scripts actually do
• README.md file table lists every file that exists — no missing entries, no stale entries
• Placeholder READMEs in scripts/, references/, assets/ consistent with what SKILL.md says about each directory

Step 4 — Report

Open with a coverage line listing every dimension checked:

Checked: structure · description · body-discipline · patterns · file-structure · formatting · scripts · internal-consistency · provenance

Then output only dimensions that have findings, grouped under H3 headings, FAILs before SUGGESTIONs within each dimension. Omit clean dimensions entirely — their absence confirms they passed.

For each finding:

FAIL/SUGGESTION  <finding> — file:line
                 Why: <why this is a problem>
                 Fix: <exact change — quote before/after where applicable>

Close with a result block:

## Result

PASS
PASS (N suggestions)
PASS · P info
PASS (N suggestions) · P info
FAIL (N fails · M suggestions)
FAIL (N fails · M suggestions) · P info
Run /skill-improve to address findings.

INFO findings are observational — do not affect PASS/FAIL. Omit · P info when there are no INFO findings. Omit the /skill-improve line when there are no findings at all. Do not apply fixes — report and propose only.