skill-quality: skill authoring, quality and catalog #7582

Parent

Refs #7555. Source: PLAN Phase 14, topic poteto-review. Thread: Skill authoring, quality and
catalog.

Depends on

• config-cascade: settings resolution and convention home #7571 Settings resolution and convention home (description target and warn settings)

Outcome

Skills follow Anthropic's authoring guidance as measured rules: a SKILL.md router with actions,
evals on all skills, a description standard with probe-proven triggers, consolidated *:check
skills, and catalog files generated in the release PR.

Decisions

• Skills follow Anthropic's authoring guidance: SKILL.md a router under 5k tokens, actions/ per
  action, evals on all skills, split only by exception, rollout across every skill (D107, Q203).
  Origin: ours (owner reworked the size options).
• Description standard: one what-sentence, "Use when" with one trigger per branch, at most three
  probe-proven hook terms, target 250, warn above 419, fail at 1,024; check 12 drops the single-quote
  rule (D82, Q183, Q184). Settings: description target 250; warn 419 (1,024 fixed). Check 3's
  unquoted-trigger tracking lands first, in the same PR, with a red-then-green test; two attempts
  ranked on the session-flow trim-pilot diff (B2).
• Consolidate the *:check skills (recount first: 29), then architecture:map-* and
  code-metrics:audit-*; fix the Cursor /check collision by consolidation plus distinct first
  clauses (D82, Q179, Q186; owner observed the collision).
• Stack-specific tools: detect, research live, interview, write setup into the project; use an
  existing tool without an interview (D66, Q96).
• Bare invocation: infer the action; read-only proceeds and names what it inferred (setting
  proceed); state changes propose and wait (fixed floor); unattended state changes stop and report
  (D79, Q93).
• Invocation convention: any automation starter means model-invocable, safety in body gates and
  scripts; user-invoked only for starved skills no automation starts (D53, Q138).
• Skill criteria gain "choose leading words on purpose" with --baseline; write-for-agents gains a
  leading-words section, a sentence-level no-op test, the context-boundary line (D4, Q525).
• Don't wrap skill-creator; add a tested route for cutting text (D7).
• Files, not registry entries; catalog, cheat-sheet and marketplace manifest generated in the release
  PR; problem-first section above the generated cheat-sheet block (Q143, Q144, Q146, Q546;
  Lauren's files-not-registry rule).
• Shared copies stay copies; one shared-copies record (D83, Q180). Plugin READMEs use one install form
  or point to the root README (Q526). Re-audit shipped skills on each model release (D6; measured gap:
  median 1,477 words versus Matt 506 and pstack 364).
• Probes on this thread's slices: four invocation probes, routine first (D53); picker label
  re-observation before leaf-name registry removal (Q179); skill-visibility measurement gates
  Q183-Q187 (Q137, Q182); trim pilot on session-flow, non-inferiority with a 5-point margin (Q185);
  each consolidation merge probed and the recount (Q186); hook terms probe-proven (Q183); hand-off
  phrasing eval, 12 cases, 3 arms, 3 runs (D85, Q125, Q188); steering words with --baseline (D4);
  each cut tested with and without removed text (D6, D107); skillListingBudgetFraction stays 0.07
  until the pilot ships (Q187).
• Sub-topic promotion: this thread gets its own plan at phase start (B7).

Key interfaces

From the design's module layout: "skill-quality: check 12 drops the single-quote rule; description
standard (target 250, warn 419, fail 1,024). *:check skills consolidate after a recount, then
architecture:map-* and code-metrics:audit-*." Settings: "Description target 250, warn 419 (1,024
fixed). ... Bare run read-only proceed."

Done when

• The check-skill test suite exits 0 and includes a case asserting check 3 warns on a dropped
  unquoted trigger (no such case on main).
• rg -c "not single-quoted" plugins/skill-quality/scripts/check-skill.sh returns 0 (nonzero on
  main), and bash plugins/skill-quality/scripts/check-skill.sh plugins/session-flow/skills exits 0.
• Every slice sub-issue is closed by a merged PR, each with its probe or eval result.

Out of scope

• Setting the fleet listing budget (housekeeping thread, after the pilot).

Related

• Concise skills rollout: the 15 check-and-setup plugins #6619 concise skills rollout, check-and-setup plugins (stays under Concise skills: one skill-creation standard, evals, and a fleet-wide rollout #6476; linked, not moved).
• Concise skills rollout: playwright (3 skills, 2 model-invoked) #6587 concise skills rollout, playwright (stays under Concise skills: one skill-creation standard, evals, and a fleet-wide rollout #6476; linked, not moved).