# Ceremony Design

> Design a quality ceremony that drives standards compliance

- Skill: `sethdford/ceremony-design` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add sethdford/ceremony-design`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/sethdford/ceremony-design/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: sethdford (https://skillmd.com/u/sethdford)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/sethdford/ceremony-design

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# Ceremony Design Skill

Create a new quality ceremony that sustainably enforces standards through team rituals.

## Context

Ceremonies are scheduled, repeating quality checks that ensure standards are maintained and drift is caught. A well-designed ceremony becomes part of the team's workflow — efficient, purposeful, and actually attended.

## Domain Context

The three main ceremonies in claude-standards are:

1. **PR Gate** (every PR) — Automated + manual checks before merge
2. **Weekly Drift Audit** (weekly) — Detect standards divergence between PRs
3. **Release Gate** (before release) — Final comprehensive audit

Each ceremony has: a trigger, participants, a checklist, success criteria, and escalation paths.

Reference: `levels/L2-ceremonies/ceremonies/`

## Instructions

1. **Define ceremony essentials** — Answer these questions:
   - **Trigger:** When does this ceremony run? (every event, scheduled, on-demand)
   - **Owner:** Who runs it? (team lead, rotating person, automated)
   - **Participants:** Who should be involved? (which roles/functions)
   - **Cadence:** How often? (every PR, daily, weekly, monthly, pre-release)
   - **Duration:** How long should it take? (5 min, 30 min, 2 hours)
   - Deliverable: Ceremony definition document

2. **Design the checklist** — What gets verified?
   - List specific checks (not vague goals)
   - Right: "Run check-doc-index.sh and verify no orphaned docs"
   - Wrong: "Make sure documentation is good"
   - Each check should be executable (can someone follow it exactly?)
   - Deliverable: Step-by-step checklist

3. **Automate what you can** — Reduce manual work
   - Identify which checks can be run by scripts (most doc/reference checks)
   - Identify which require human judgment (code quality review)
   - Create or reference scripts for automated checks
   - Deliverable: List of automated checks + scripts

4. **Define success criteria** — When is ceremony complete?
   - "All automated checks pass AND no blocking issues found" — too vague
   - "check-doc-index.sh passes AND check-standards-refs.sh passes AND reviewer approves" — clear
   - Success criteria determine whether work can proceed
   - Deliverable: Clear, testable success criteria

5. **Design escalation path** — What happens if ceremony finds issues?
   - Who gets notified?
   - What happens if issues are found?
   - Is work blocked, or can it proceed with known issues?
   - Who has authority to override?
   - Deliverable: Escalation flowchart or rules

6. **Measure ceremony health** — Are issues actually getting fixed?
   - Track: Issues found per ceremony, percentage fixed, time-to-fix
   - If most issues are ignored, ceremony is ineffective
   - If ceremony is never triggered, something's wrong with the trigger
   - Quarterly: Review metrics and adjust cadence/checklist
   - Deliverable: Metrics dashboard or review process

## Anti-Patterns

1. **Too many ceremonies** — Team is overwhelmed with review processes
   - Wrong: Daily drift audit + weekly drift audit + pre-PR review + post-merge review + monthly release check
   - Right: PR gate (automated) + weekly drift audit + pre-release gate
   - Impact: Ceremonies become annoying → people skip them → no enforcement
   - Guard: Start with 2-3 ceremonies max; add more only if team asks

2. **Ceremonies nobody attends** — No one shows up for the scheduled review
   - Wrong: "Weekly drift audit, Wednesday 2pm" — nobody comes
   - Right: "Run drift-audit.sh Friday morning before standup, async review, sync discuss blockers"
   - Impact: Drift isn't caught
   - Guard: Ceremony timing should be convenient; async options are better than requiring attendance

3. **Ceremonies without outcomes** — Ceremony runs but nothing changes
   - Wrong: Run audit, find 5 issues, don't create any issues or PRs
   - Right: Run audit, prioritize issues, create 1-2 PRs to fix top priority items
   - Impact: Standards knowledge builds but practice doesn't improve
   - Guard: Every ceremony should result in at least 1 action item

## Further Reading

- `levels/L2-ceremonies/ceremonies/` — Reference ceremony definitions
- `levels/L2-ceremonies/ceremonies/pr-gate.md` — Example well-documented ceremony
- `levels/L1-context/library/quality/governance.md` — Standards enforcement principles