Task Plan: Make validate-plugins CI gate blocking

Task Plan: Make validate-plugins CI gate blocking

Background

The backlog item (added 2026-02-14) described 19 errors and 63 warnings preventing the validate-plugins CI step from being blocking. As of 2026-02-18, the situation has changed dramatically:

Current validator state (verified 2026-02-18):

• Exit code: 0 (no errors)
• 0 LK001 errors (broken links — all fixed in prior work)
• 0 SK007 errors (orchestrating-swarms already split into 4 sub-skills)
• 0 SK005 warnings (trigger phrases — resolved)
• 13 SK006 warnings (complexity — these are warnings, not errors)
• 4 LK002 warnings (missing ./ prefix in agentskills/SKILL.md)

The validator already passes. The one-line CI change to make it blocking is safe now.

Task 1: Fix LK002 warnings in agentskills/SKILL.md

• Status: COMPLETE
• Dependencies: none
• Priority: low
• Complexity: trivial
• Agent: general-purpose
• Completed: 2026-02-18

Add ./ prefix to 4 bare relative links in plugins/plugin-creator/skills/agentskills/SKILL.md:

• references/best-practices.md → ./references/best-practices.md
• references/specification.md → ./references/specification.md
• references/integration.md → ./references/integration.md

(Note: best-practices.md appears twice in the file.)

Acceptance Criteria

1. All 4 LK002 warnings eliminated for agentskills/SKILL.md
2. Links still resolve to correct files
3. No new validator findings introduced

Verification Steps

1. Run validator on the single file: uv run plugins/plugin-creator/scripts/plugin_validator.py plugins/plugin-creator/skills/agentskills/SKILL.md
2. Confirm 0 LK002 warnings
3. Verify referenced files exist at the ./references/ paths

Task 2: Promote validate-plugins to blocking CI gate

• Status: COMPLETE
• Dependencies: none (validator already exits 0)
• Priority: high
• Complexity: trivial
• Agent: general-purpose
• Completed: 2026-02-18

Remove validate-plugins from the allowed-failures list at line 493 of .github/workflows/code-quality.yml. Also update the comment block at lines 207-212 to reflect the new blocking status.

Acceptance Criteria

1. validate-plugins is NOT in allowed-failures
2. Quality gate needs array still includes validate-plugins
3. Comment block accurately reflects blocking status
4. YAML syntax valid

Verification Steps

1. Validate YAML: python3 -c "import yaml; yaml.safe_load(open('.github/workflows/code-quality.yml'))"
2. Run uv run prek run --files .github/workflows/code-quality.yml
3. After push: gh run list -R Jamie-BitFlight/claude_skills --limit=3 to verify CI passes

Task 3: Update backlog item as completed

• Status: COMPLETE
• Dependencies: Task 1, Task 2
• Priority: medium
• Complexity: trivial
• Agent: orchestrator (self)
• Completed: 2026-02-18

Move the backlog item from P1 to Completed section in .claude/BACKLOG.md. Update p1-count in frontmatter. Add completion date and description of what was done.

Acceptance Criteria

1. Item moved to Completed section with date and summary
2. Frontmatter counts accurate
3. No formatting issues in BACKLOG.md

Verification Steps

1. Grep for the item title in Completed section
2. Verify p1-count decremented
3. Validate markdown structure

Out of Scope

• SK006 warnings (13 skills): These are complexity warnings, not errors. They don't block the CI gate. Each is a separate refactoring effort tracked as future work. The backlog item for "plugin-validator pre-commit output is too noisy" (P1) covers the UX concern around warning volume.
• SK005 trigger phrase improvements: Already resolved. If re-introduced, tracked separately.
• agent-browser missing references: The skill has only SKILL.md with no references/ or templates/ dirs. The broken links were apparently cleaned up in a prior commit. If re-introduced, tracked separately.

Notes

The investigation report at plugins/plugin-creator/.claude/reports/validator-findings-investigation.md was comprehensive but is now partially stale — many of its findings were resolved between 2026-02-14 and 2026-02-18. The current validator run is the authoritative source of truth.