Plugin Skill Audit

/plugin-skill-audit — Plugin Skill Auditor

Audit skills in plugin/skills/<name>/ against the agentskills.io spec + best-practices and ai-skills conventions. Emits a per-skill pass/warn/fail report and optionally applies safe fixes. Counterpart to /plugin-skill-create; NEVER creates skills.

When to use

• After editing skills under plugin/skills/, or before merging a PR that touches them
• When a skill stops triggering on prompts you expect (description audit)
• When migrating older skills to current conventions, or when /plugin-doctor flags frontmatter

Not for: scaffolding new skills (use /plugin-skill-create); Codex/Windsurf assets (.agents/skills/asset-validation/); whole-plugin diagnostic (/plugin-doctor).

Invocation

/plugin-skill-audit                            # audit every skill (== --all)
/plugin-skill-audit feature-design             # audit one skill
/plugin-skill-audit feature-design --fix       # + apply safe auto-fixes
/plugin-skill-audit feature-design --check scripts  # only scripts/ checks
/plugin-skill-audit --all --strict             # warnings become failures

Arguments

Behavior

1. Resolve targets:
   • Single name: refuse if plugin/skills/<name>/ does not exist; suggest /plugin-skill-create <name> if appropriate
   • --all: enumerate every immediate subdirectory of plugin/skills/ containing a SKILL.md
2. For each target run the check groups (per --check):
   • spec — agentskills.io frontmatter spec
   • body — body size + progressive-disclosure structure
   • refs — cross-reference integrity
   • eval — eval-case + judge-rubric wiring
   • scripts — scripts/ agentic-use checks (skipped if the skill has no scripts/ dir)
   • plugin — ai-skills plugin-specific conventions (H5 trigger, context: fork, etc.)
3. Print a per-skill report: name | check | status | detail
4. If --fix: apply only the safe, deterministic fixes from the Safe-fix table; re-run checks to confirm
5. Append an audit-log entry to .ai-skills-memory/plugin-skill-audit.log
6. Exit non-zero if any check failed (or any warned in --strict)

agentskills.io specification checks (group spec)

Source of truth: digest prompt-engineering/skill-authoring-spec.md; only audit verdicts below (progressive disclosure — field rules live in the digest).

Frontmatter — required fields:

• name — fail if not 1–64 chars / not lowercase a–z+digits+hyphens / leading-trailing or consecutive (--) hyphen / not equal to the parent directory name (mismatch is always fail, never --fix)
• description — fail if not 1–1024 chars or empty; CRITICAL fail if it contains the literal TODO token; warn if it does NOT begin with the literal Use this skill when … phrase (Form A), or is missing the folded-in capability / trigger keywords / third person (see prompt-engineering/optimizing-descriptions.md)

Frontmatter — optional fields permitted by spec:

• license — name or path to a bundled license
• compatibility — spec cap 1–500 chars; warn if > 500 chars OR if present without an actual runtime/environment requirement; absent is fine
• metadata — string→string map (warn on non-string values)
• allowed-tools — space-separated tool list (experimental; warn if used)

ai-skills-tolerated (not upstream): context: fork (slash-invocable), argument-hint (/help hint), disable-model-invocation: true (knowledge-only). Any field outside {spec-optional ∪ ai-skills-tolerated} → warn.

Body checks (group body)

• ≤ 5000 tokens AND ≤ 500 lines (digest recommended) — warn beyond, fail beyond 1.5×; ≤ 12000 chars (ai-skills rule) — fail beyond
• First H1 present, matching # /<name> or # <Title>
• Recommended sections present (warn if missing): When to use, Invocation, Arguments (if argument-hint), Behavior, Failure modes, Integration
• Long templates moved to sibling files (warn if an inline fenced block > 80 lines)
• Procedures over declarations (warn if body reads as one concrete answer, not reusable steps)

Cross-reference checks (group refs)

Per relative reference in SKILL.md:

• File-path refs (scripts/, references/, assets/) resolve under the skill dir; @<skill-name> resolves to an existing plugin/skills/<name>/; eval-rubric / hook / schema paths resolve under their roots
• No absolute user-machine paths (/home/..., C:\Users\...) — fail
• Reference depth ≤ 1 level from SKILL.md (digest best-practice) — warn if deeper

Eval-wiring checks (group eval)

• plugin/eval/cases/<name>/ has ≥1 case stub — warn if missing for a context: fork skill
• plugin/eval/judge-rubrics/<name>.md exists when referenced in plugin/eval/config.json — fail otherwise
• Case JSON parses with required fields (case_id, skill, input, expected); judge_rubric path resolves; judge_model ∈ {haiku, sonnet, opus}

Script checks (group scripts; part of all; skipped if no scripts/ dir)

Selectable via --check scripts; runs inside all. Per file under scripts/ (digest "Using scripts in skills"):

• Referenced from SKILL.md & resolves under the skill dir — fail if dangling; unreferenced — warn
• No interactive / TTY-blocking read or prompt — warn
• --help/usage path documented — warn if absent
• Structured data → stdout, diagnostics → stderr — warn if mixed
• Documented exit codes; --dry-run for destructive ops; idempotent — warn if absent
• Predictable output size (summary default / --offset / --output) — warn if unbounded
• Pinned inline deps (PEP 723 / npm:+semver / bundler/inline) — warn on missing/floating; runtime prerequisite in SKILL.md or compatibility — warn if neither

Plugin-convention checks (group plugin — runs as part of all)

• Description BEGINS with the literal Use this skill when … phrase (Form A) and is third-person — warn otherwise; still CRITICAL-fail on a literal TODO token
• context: fork for a slash command; disable-model-invocation: true only with no context: fork
• No project-specific assumptions banned by plugin/rules/global-package-rules.md; English-only
• Sibling resource files referenced from SKILL.md ≥ once — warn on orphans

Safe-fix table (--fix)

--fix never rewrites prose, rephrases descriptions, or moves content between files.

Report format

plugin-skill-audit report — target: <name|--all>; fix=<on|off>; strict=<on|off>
<skill-name>
  spec pass  name=<name>, description=<len>/1024
  body warn  body=<chars>/12000; <lines> lines
  refs pass  3 references resolved
  eval warn  no eval/cases/<name>/ stub
  plugin pass
summary: N audited | P pass | W warn | F fail

When --fix runs, a second block lists every applied fix with the line range touched.

Hard rules

• Never rewrite skill prose — fixes limited to the Safe-fix table
• Never rename a skill — name↔folder mismatch is always a fail, never a fix
• Never invent eval cases — only check they exist and parse
• Plugin-only scope — plugin/skills/ only (.agents/skills/ → asset-validation/)
• Spec source of truth is the digest prompt-engineering/skill-authoring-spec.md (+ optimizing-descriptions.md) — update the digest, never re-inline here
• English-only per repo CLAUDE.md

Failure modes

• Target not found: report path; if name looks new, suggest /plugin-skill-create <name>
• Network unavailable: fall back to cached digest, surface a warn
• Unparseable YAML frontmatter: fail with the line number; refuse any --fix
• --fix vs uncommitted changes: refuse, ask for a clean working tree

Memory writes

Integration

• Status: internal procedure for /plugin-author audit. Not slash-invocable. The umbrella reads it directly; ai-skills:prompt-engineer pre-reads it before any plugin-asset DEV/REVIEW pass.
• Reachable via: /plugin-author audit [<name> | --all] [--deep] [--strict] [--fix] [--check spec|body|refs|eval|scripts|all]
• Reads: plugin/skills/<name>/SKILL.md, sibling resource files, plugin/eval/cases/<name>/, plugin/eval/judge-rubrics/<name>.md, plugin/eval/config.json, plugin/.claude-plugin/plugin.json
• Writes: stdout report; .ai-skills-memory/plugin-skill-audit.log; (only with --fix) safe-fix-table edits.
• Companion: plugin/skills/plugin-skill-create/SKILL.md. Whole-plugin diagnostic: /plugin-doctor.
• Spec reference (cached, offline source of truth): prompt-engineering/skill-authoring-spec.md , prompt-engineering/optimizing-descriptions.md — mirroring https://agentskills.io/specification + /skill-creation/{best-practices,optimizing-descriptions,using-scripts}
• Codex/Windsurf analog: .agents/skills/asset-validation/ + .codex/checklists/codex-asset-review.md (parity-tracked in review/parity-matrix.md).