Skill Quality Audit

Audit and quality-review AI agent skills (SKILL.md files) against established best practices from the Nevo Systems skill-writing framework. Checks trigger quality, structure (rigid vs flexible), conciseness, progressive disclosure, and common mistakes. Use when reviewing, auditing, or evaluating an existing skill, when a skill isn't performing well, when the user says "review this skill", "audit my skill", "check this SKILL.md", "skill quality check", or "/skill-review".

Skill Review

Audit a SKILL.md file against the following quality dimensions. Report findings with severity (critical / warning / nit) and actionable fix suggestions.

Review Dimensions

Evaluate in order. Stop at critical findings — fix those first.

1. Trigger Quality

The description field in YAML frontmatter is the ONLY trigger mechanism. It must answer three questions clearly:

• What does this skill do? (1-2 sentences)
• When should the agent use it? (contexts, task types)
• What trigger phrases activate it? (exact words users might say)

Red flags:

• Description is vague (<2 sentences or generic like "Helps with X")
• Trigger phrases are missing or too broad
• Trigger conditions are in the body, not the frontmatter
• Skill would trigger when irrelevant (overly broad scope)

2. Structure: Rigid vs Flexible

Determine if the skill matches the right structural approach:

Approach	Use When	Signs of Mismatch
Rigid	Fragile task, consistency critical, skipping steps = failure	Loose guidelines for DB migration
Flexible	Multiple valid approaches, requires judgment	Overly prescriptive for code review

Decision rule: If the agent deviates from instructions, how much damage?

• High damage → Must be rigid (numbered steps, checklists, exact commands)
• Low damage → Flexible OK (guidelines, heuristics, decision frameworks)

3. Conciseness

• Body is under 500 lines
• No explanations of things the model already knows (e.g., "write clear English", "use proper indentation")
• No conceptual documentation — instructions only (not "X is a system that...", but "Run X with these flags")
• Each paragraph justifies its token cost

4. Progressive Disclosure

Check the three-level loading strategy:

• Level 1 (always in context): Frontmatter name + description — under ~100 words
• Level 2 (on trigger): SKILL.md body — under 5,000 words, self-contained enough to start work
• Level 3 (on demand): References/ — loaded only when needed

Red flags:

• SKILL.md body contains detailed API docs, schemas, or variant-specific content → move to references/
• Multiple variants/frameworks live in body instead of separate reference files
• No references/ directory exists but body exceeds 500 lines
• Reference files not explicitly mentioned in SKILL.md body

5. Common Mistakes Checklist

• Over-explaining the obvious: Instructions like "write grammatically correct English" or "use proper code formatting". The model already does this. Remove.
• Trigger info in body: "When to Use This Skill" section in the body is useless — only frontmatter matters for triggering. Move to description or delete.
• Documentation instead of instructions: Explaining what something is instead of telling the agent what to do. Replace "Database migrations are schema changes..." with "Back up the database before migration."
• Too many tiny skills: If two skills always trigger together, merge them. If a skill is under 20 lines after removing fluff, consider if it's too granular.
• Context budget ignored: Skill consumes excessive tokens → use progressive disclosure.
• Bad naming: skill1, my-skill, helper, utils → use descriptive, verb-led hyphen-case names.

6. Bundled Resources Check

• scripts/: Are they tested? Do they solve a repeatedly-rewritten problem?
• references/: Are they referenced from SKILL.md with clear "when to read" guidance?
• assets/: Are they output-oriented (templates, images), not documentation?
• No extraneous files (README.md, CHANGELOG.md, INSTALLATION_GUIDE.md, etc.)

7. Trigger Testing (if applicable)

If a test plan exists or can be inferred:

• List 3 queries that SHOULD trigger this skill
• List 3 queries that SHOULD NOT trigger this skill
• Flag any overlap or ambiguity

Output Format

## Skill Review: [skill-name]

### Summary
[1-2 sentences: overall quality, primary issues]

### Findings

| # | Severity | Dimension | Issue | Fix |
|---|----------|-----------|-------|-----|
| 1 | critical | Trigger | ... | ... |

### Trigger Test
- ✅ Should trigger: ...
- ❌ Should NOT trigger: ...

### Score
- Trigger: X/10
- Structure: X/10
- Conciseness: X/10
- Progressive Disclosure: X/10
- Overall: X/10