Agent Quality Standards & Validation Checklist

Agent Quality Standards & Validation Checklist

Load after Phase 4 improvements are applied. Use quality standards to verify the overall repair meets the bar, then run the checklist item by item.

Quality Standards

A fully improved agent satisfies all of the following:

Voice:

• System prompt is second-person throughout — no first-person, no third-person
• Persona established in the first sentence
• Process steps are numbered, sequential, and imperative

Description:

• Starts with "Use this agent when..." (exact routing pattern)
• 2–4 <example> blocks, each fully formed
• Commentary explains routing reasoning, not just restates user intent
• Proactive trigger examples present for proactive agents

Tools and modifiers:

• tools restricted to minimum needed (least-privilege for autonomous execution)
• No unscoped Bash unless full shell access is genuinely required
• color set and semantically meaningful
• skills: preloads listed match what is actually used in the process

Efficiency:

• System prompt under 400 lines; domain reference data deferred to skills: preloads
• No routing guidance embedded in the system prompt body
• No hedging language; direct imperatives throughout

Validation Checklist

Description:

• Starts with "Use this agent when..."
• Uses | literal scalar (not > — XML <example> blocks require literal newlines)
• 2–4 <example> blocks present
• Each example has: Context:, user:, assistant:, <commentary>
• <commentary> explains routing reasoning (not just restates the user message)
• Proactive two-turn assistant pattern included if agent fires after events

System Prompt:

• Written entirely in second person
• No first-person language ("I will", "I'll", "I am")
• No bare imperatives without "you" (risk of reading as skill instruction)
• First sentence is a persona statement ("You are a [role] specializing in [domain]")
• Process steps are numbered and each has a clear completion criterion
• Output format section is present and explicit
• Edge cases section is present

Frontmatter:

• name is lowercase-hyphens, 3–50 chars, not a generic term
• color is set
• model is set or intentionally omitted (inherit)
• tools is restricted for analysis-only agents
• No unscoped Bash unless required
• skills: preloads listed are actually used in the process steps

Efficiency:

• System prompt is under 400 lines
• No embedded reference tables > 100 lines (use skills: instead)
• No "When to trigger this agent" language in the body
• No hedging ("you might", "generally", "consider possibly")

Script Opportunities:

• No code blocks re-generated identically across invocations
• Any referenced scripts have trigger condition, exact invocation, and output handling
• Steps that must produce consistent output are scripted, not left to LLM generation