BF skill-design-guide
Design better AI skills with proven architecture patterns. Helps you decide Workflow vs Agent, pick the right pattern (Prompt Chaining, Routing, Parallelization, Orchestrator-Workers, Evaluator-Optimizer), write clean SKILL.md files, and catch common mistakes with a governance-aware quality checklist. Based on design principles from Anthropic, OpenAI, and LangChain.
As a process F 41/100 · Will not run — References files that are not bundled: references/xxx.md
How to improve
- Say in the description WHEN to use the skill ("use when…", example requests): that is the agent's main cue.
- The text references files that are not there: add them or drop the references.
- 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: 9. Evidence is masked. Grey chips explain why severity was lowered.
Against the Agent Skills spec
- warning
description-no-whendescription does not say WHEN to use the skill (no "use when") - warning
missing-refreference to a missing file: references/xxx.md - note
frontmatter-keyunknown frontmatter key "slug" - note
frontmatter-keyunknown frontmatter key "displayName" - note
frontmatter-keyunknown frontmatter key "display_name" - note
frontmatter-keyunknown frontmatter key "agent_created" - note
frontmatter-keyunknown frontmatter key "read_when"
Process rating: all ten parameters 41/100
- 0Tools and files. 1 referenced file(s) missing: references/xxx.md
- 0Inputs and preconditions. Does not say what the process needs to start
- 0Progress reporting. Says nothing while it works
- 20When it triggers. No condition that starts the skill
- 30Running it twice. 15 mutating operations with no state check
- 40Consistency. Frontmatter name (skill-design-guide) differs from the folder (skill-design-guide-skill)
- 50Failures and branches. 0 branches, has a failure section
- 60Result and completion. Output format stated, no completion criterion
- 100Steps. 20 steps
- 100Execution cost. Instruction body is 2310 tokens
- low 14 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)
- +2Single-language instructions
- +3Description length 368: enough signal without eating the budget
- +4Structure: 18 headings
- +3Step-by-step instructions: 20 items
- +3Output format is stated explicitly
- +4Has examples (1 code blocks)
- +4Reference files are cited in the instructions (5 of 5)
- +1License stated
Quality base 70; lint remarks subtract, signals add up to 100. Result: 71.