`skills:eval` was at 38/46 with several skills measuring 0-33%. The low
scores were mostly bad eval cases rather than bad descriptions, for two
reasons that were nowhere written down:
- The harness runs each case with `--max-turns 1`, so the skill has to be
the model's FIRST tool call. A prompt asking "how does X work here", or
naming a concrete file, sends the model to Read/Grep first — a better
answer to the question, scored as a miss. Every 0% case was one of these.
- `AGENTS.md` is resident on every turn, so a prompt it already answers is
answered without any skill and the case can never pass.
Replace the cases that measured the wrong thing, expand every model-invoked
skill from 3 to 5 positives (negatives kept) so one flake cannot cross the
threshold, and reshape `local-dev`'s description to the action-first form.
Add `docs/skill-authoring.md` with the case shapes that fire, the ones that
cannot, and the probe-then-measure loop.
RUNS=5 npm run skills:eval: 63/63 at or above threshold, 60 at 100%,
all 18 negatives clean.
Closes#2202
Signed-off-by: cliffhall <cliff@futurescale.com>
`release` is now the only skill reachable by name alone, which is right: nobody
cuts a release by implication, whereas "file an issue for this" and "triage the
new issues" are both ordinary prose instructions.
Eval cases committed for both; each measured 5/5 at RUNS=3. One initial case
was rebuilt rather than tuned: "file an issue for the flaky Storybook test"
scored 0% because its SUBJECT was unresolved — the model went off grepping for
which test was flaky instead of reaching for the filing procedure. A trigger
case must not make the model investigate before it can act.
The full eval across all nine model-invoked skills reports a cost worth having
in writing, and it contradicts the justification given for the previous flip.
Every negative case still passes 100%, so there is no over-triggering — but the
skills that were already model-invoked measurably LOST trigger rate:
`project-structure` fell from 100% to 0% on two cases (n=4) and `testing` from
3/5 to 2/5, while all six newly flipped skills measured 100%.
So the ceiling is attention, not characters: the listing sat at 2.8k of 4k
throughout, and "the budget is not tight" was the wrong reason to think flipping
was free. AGENTS.md now records this, and requires the FULL eval to be re-run
after any flip rather than just the new skill's own cases.
Two of project-structure's three cases are also the invalid-case pattern this
file already documents — `core/auth/` is described in the AGENTS.md tree, so a
model answering "which package owns the secret storage backends" without a skill
is correct rather than failing. `testing`'s cases are not, and it was the weaker
of the two before this change as well.
Signed-off-by: cliffhall <cliff@futurescale.com>
- verify-skills: the best-effort `plugin validate` hand-off now also requires
the EXACT pinned CLI. `local:gate` runs `validate` before the pinned
`verify:skills:cli` step, so a newer local CLI could reject skills that CI's
pinned validator accepts — and the gate would exit there, never reaching the
reproducible check. One schema everywhere, or none.
- Dropped `PLUGIN_VALIDATE_MIN_VERSION`: with both validators on the exact pin
it was read only by its own test, and a constant nothing enforces is a claim
nothing enforces. Its test now pins what actually matters — that equality is
distinguishable from newer as well as older.
- The CI step's comment described the old floor behavior.
- issue-create: the duplicate check searched only open issues, so a completed or
rejected match was invisible to a procedure that says never to duplicate.
Searches all states and reports state/stateReason.
Signed-off-by: cliffhall <cliff@futurescale.com>
- verify:skills:cli — the authoritative validator is now a GUARANTEED step in
`local:gate` and CI, not a best-effort hand-off. It resolves the CLI itself
(an installed one at 2.1.233+, else a pinned `npx -y`), so both tiers run the
same script and cannot drift. `verify:skills` keeps skipping when the CLI is
absent, which is right for `validate`: fast, offline, no Claude Code required.
- skill-manifest: the 1,536-char listing-entry cap covers `description` +
`when_to_use` together; checking the description alone passed an over-cap
entry. `when_to_use` is now parsed, validated and counted, with boundary tests
at 1,536/1,537.
- verify-skills: report the budget as *this repo's contribution*. The real
listing budget is shared with bundled skills and the contributor's own
~/.claude/skills, none of which is visible from here, so the number was
claiming more than it measured.
- skill-eval: a negative case now means "no skill OF THIS REPO'S fired". It
failed on any Skill invocation, so a contributor with an unrelated global
skill got a false failure about their environment rather than these skills.
- docs/architecture + local-dev: the Node backend runner gets its
`@inspector/core` alias from `clients/web/tsup.runner.config.ts`, not from
Vite. The old text sent runner work to the wrong config.
- local-dev: the tarball does not ship "only each client's build/" — the
allowlist also carries `clients/web/dist`, `clients/web/static` and the
install helper. States the invariant that actually matters instead.
- issue-triage: the test for needing triage is "no board card". Adding "and no
milestone" would skip the approved-but-unboarded case the same section then
handles. Also corrected the `$M` note: the lookup is `--state all`, so closed
issues DO have entries — `isopen` is about the invariants, not the lookup.
- issue-create: replaced "all five" with a per-version table. Steps 3 and 6
(milestone, Priority) do not exist for v1, so the old list opened with a rule
the same skill later tells you to violate.
Signed-off-by: cliffhall <cliff@futurescale.com>
- CI now installs a pinned `claude` CLI and runs `claude plugin validate` as its
own step. The guard skips the authoritative validator when the CLI is absent,
which without this meant "always, in CI" — so the acceptance criterion was
aspirational. Verified it needs no authentication (clean HOME).
- skill-eval: classify a run from its terminal `result` event, not its exit
code. With `--max-turns 1` a run in which a skill FIRES necessarily hits the
limit and the CLI exits 1 (`error_max_turns`, `num_turns: 2`), so last round's
blanket nonzero rejection threw away exactly the observations the eval counts.
A run with no terminal `result`, or an unusable subtype, still rejects.
- skill-eval: fail collection on a skill that does not parse, a model-invoked
skill with no eval file, unreadable JSON, or invalid cases. Skipping them let
`skills:eval` exit 0 while silently omitting the skill just broken.
- verify-skills: `main()` takes an optional skills directory, and
`verify-skills.main.test.mjs` drives it over fixtures — missing SKILL.md,
malformed frontmatter, undeclared invocation mode, missing/invalid evals,
budget overflow (and that name-only skills do not count toward it), and
multi-offender reporting. Matches the sibling guards' *.main.test.mjs
precedent; without it the gate could stop enforcing while the parser tests
stayed green.
- issue-create: the note claimed an issue arrives unlabeled, contradicting
.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE — blank issues are disabled, the bug form applies
`bug`, the feature form applies `enhancement` + `v2`. Now a table of what each
form sets and what triage still has to add.
Signed-off-by: cliffhall <cliff@futurescale.com>
- skill-manifest: the closing `---` fence must occupy a whole line. `---oops`
was accepted as a terminator, silently truncating the frontmatter and passing
validation — the exact failure the guard exists to catch. Regression cases
added (prefix, trailing whitespace, EOF, CRLF).
- skill-eval: reject a nonzero `claude -p` exit instead of resolving it as an
empty observation. An auth error or rate limit was scoring as "no skill
invoked", which passes every negative case and reads as a trigger miss on
every positive one.
- skill-eval: extract `collectSkillInvocations` / `sampleHit` behind a `main()`
guard and cover them in `skill-eval.test.mjs` — the stream parsing and the
process-outcome handling are unreachable from an eval run's happy path.
- docs/test-servers: annotate the era on every catalogue row. Six legacy rows
carried no annotation under a "unless noted, Modern" default, so the doc sent
readers to the wrong era for the feature they were trying to see.
- docs/quality-gate: `validate` runs four guards, not three; add the
`verify:skills` row and the two new `test:scripts` suites; fix the `#publishing`
fragment left dangling by the split.
- issue-create / pr-flow: delegate the card steps to `/board-ops` rather than
restating its option IDs, which are explicitly unstable.
- issue-triage: the audit counted presence, not cardinality — an issue carrying
both `v1` and `v2` passed a check that claims "exactly one". Same for the five
type labels. Also scope the two milestone checks to board #28.
- AGENTS.md: codify the v1 milestone exception. Every milestone is a v2 release
bucket, so a v1 issue has none to take and the Incoming-milestone invariant
cannot apply to board #11.
- clients/launcher/README: its pointer promised an explanation of why the cli/tui
manifests ship, which the extracted guide does not make.
Signed-off-by: cliffhall <cliff@futurescale.com>
Closes#2163
`AGENTS.md` was one 1,223-line contract loaded in full on every turn, whether
the task was a one-line CSS fix or a release cut. This splits it: rules stay
resident, procedures move to `.claude/skills/`.
- Ten skills under `.claude/skills/`, seven `disable-model-invocation: true`
(invoked by name only, so they cost no listing context and have no trigger
question) and three model-invoked with committed eval cases.
- `AGENTS.md` 1,223 → 380 lines: rules, a skills index, and a project tree
reduced to one line per entry. The removed recipes are not duplicated.
- `README.md` 811 → 105 lines, split into `docs/{architecture,quality-gate,
test-servers,publishing,docker}.md`, and dropped from `CLAUDE.md`'s auto-load.
- `.github/copilot-instructions.md` and its mirroring rule removed — Copilot
reads `AGENTS.md`.
- `npm run verify:skills` (in `validate`, so in `local:gate` and CI) parses each
SKILL.md the way Claude Code does, requires an explicit invocation mode and
eval cases for model-invoked skills, and budgets the listing.
- `npm run skills:eval` runs the committed trigger cases headless.
Signed-off-by: cliffhall <cliff@futurescale.com>
