BA dev_project_engineer
Project Engineer skill — the technical authority for software development agent teams. Use this skill whenever an engineering agent needs to: analyze or audit existing codebases, produce technical assessments for the PM, create Engineering Design & Implementation Plans (frontend specs, backend specs, DB schema specs, QA specs), review developer branches, handle dev escalations, produce Asana task manifests, or coordinate with the PM on requirements alignment. Also handles the Asana heartbeat queue check every 30 minutes — checking the Engineer Queue across all active projects and responding to sessions_send nudges from the PM and devs. Trigger on any mention of code audit, technical assessment, implementation plan, engineering spec, branch review, dev escalation, architecture decisions, task breakdown for dev roles, or heartbeat queue check. This skill is the counterpart to dev_project_manager — every protocol the PM uses to talk to the engineer has a matching response protocol here.
As a process A 82/100 · Runs to the end — weak spots: inputs and preconditions, consistency
How to improve
- The SKILL.md body is over 5,000 tokens: move reference detail into references/ and load it when needed.
- Your own cases (evals/evals.json, 4–6 real requests with expected answers): the full check would then run those instead of a model-drafted suite.
- A spec.yaml with trigger phrases and assertions — a behaviour contract for CI; `skilltest init` writes a template.
Guard findings · 0
✓ No critical or high findings
Files scanned: 13. Evidence is masked. Grey chips explain why severity was lowered.
Against the Agent Skills spec
- warning
name-formatname should be kebab-case (lowercase letters, digits, hyphens) - warning
body-longSKILL.md body ≈ 7502 tokens (recommended < 5000); move details to references/
Process rating: all ten parameters 82/100
- 0Inputs and preconditions. Does not say what the process needs to start
- 40Consistency. Frontmatter name (dev_project_engineer) differs from the folder (dev-project-engineer)
- 70Execution cost. Instruction body is 7502 tokens
- 100Tools and files. No external tools needed
- 100Steps. 100 steps
- 100Result and completion. Output format and completion criterion are stated
- 100When it triggers. States when to use and when not to
- 100Failures and branches. 15 branches, has a failure section
- 100Running it twice. Mutating operations check current state
- 100Progress reporting. Reports progress
- medium Safety rules and hard prohibitions inside a skill: they belong in the system prompt, here they protect nothing
- low 17 top-level sections: this looks like several domains in one skill
Everything here is measured from the skill text rather than judged by a model, so the numbers are checkable. A parameter weighs more when it is a more common reason for the process to stall.
Quality signals
- +5Description has no quoted example phrases that should trigger the skill
- +4Description does not say when NOT to use the skill (false activations)
- +3Description length 998: 120–800 characters recommended
- +1No license
- +2Single-language instructions
- +4Structure: 46 headings
- +3Step-by-step instructions: 100 items
- +3Output format is stated explicitly
- +4Has examples (12 code blocks)
- +4Reference files are cited in the instructions (10 of 10)
Quality base 70; lint remarks subtract, signals add up to 100. Result: 73.