Acknowledgement: Shared by Peter Bamuhigire, techguypeter.com.
Use When
- Asked to AUDIT, grade, benchmark, rank, or find gaps in a whole skills engine / skill catalog
(not a single skill — for one skill's safety use
skill-safety-audit). - Deciding whether an engine is "world-class" and what to add/harden to get there.
- Producing a comprehensive, ranked, evidence-based report on an engine's quality and coverage.
Do Not Use When
- Auditing ONE skill for unsafe/malicious instructions → use
skill-safety-audit. - Auditing produced artifacts (a website/app/document) for AI slop → use the design engine's
ai-slop-typography-audit/visual-product-slop-audit. - Writing or routing a new skill → use
skill-writing/skill-taxonomy-and-routing.
Required Inputs
- The engine's path(s) and what it is FOR (its domain and the OUTPUT TYPES it must produce — e.g. websites, iOS/Android/web apps, cross-platform apps, documents, proposals, presentations, brand systems, data products). The output-type list drives the readiness audit.
- The BAR to grade against (default: world-class / top 0.1% of the relevant domain).
Workflow
- Scope it. Read the engine's router(s) (
README.md/CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md) and its doctrine. Globskills/**/SKILL.mdto list every group and skill. Identify the output types the engine is responsible for (audit ALL of them — web, iOS, Android, web apps, cross-platform, websites, documents, presentations, brand, data products, handoff — whichever apply). - Lock the rubric. Use
references/scoring-rubric.md. The bar is the top 0.1% of the domain. Default scores 45–65; any 70+ needs extraordinary, specific justification. If tempted to score 70+, you were not strict enough — find what is missing. Every score is justified with concrete deficiencies, never vibes. - Fan out parallel audit agents (see
references/parallel-agent-method.md) — one per concern, so strict scores emerge independently before synthesis. Standard fleet: (a) standards benchmark — what world-class looks like NOW for this domain, cited via a research engine under a no-hallucination rule; (b) existing-skills audit — read every SKILL.md, score each skill + group; (c) taxonomy & gap analysis — is the structure sufficient/exhaustive/balanced, what's missing; (d) per-output-type readiness — score each output type the engine must produce; (e) hardening plan — concretereferences/*+examples/*to add; (f) reading/source list — material to buy and extract, cited. - Rank every aspect using the dimension list in
references/audit-dimensions.md(taxonomy, doctrine, skill depth, worked examples, standards currency, output coverage, accessibility, production/handoff, redundancy/hygiene, discovery/routing, safety). Each /100. - Synthesize the connective verdict: executive summary, methodology, master scorecard (every dimension + group + output type + the overall engine score /100), and a phased roadmap.
- Write the report as a multi-file set under
docs/initial-analysis/(or a named audit folder) followingreferences/report-structure.md. One concern per file; a README index. - Make it actionable — the roadmap must list specific new skills (with priority P0/P1/P2), hardening moves (named files), and the target score after each phase.
Quality Standards
- Strict and evidence-based: every score cites concrete, named deficiencies.
- Comprehensive: ALL output types the engine touches are scored, none skipped.
- Cited where external: standards/benchmarks/reading verified under a no-hallucination rule.
- Actionable: ends with a prioritized roadmap and a believable target score per phase.
- Reproducible: the rubric and dimensions are fixed references, so re-audits are comparable.
Anti-Patterns
- Grading on vibes, or inflating scores (70+ without extraordinary justification).
- Auditing only the skills that exist while ignoring what's MISSING (coverage gaps).
- Skipping output types ("we only checked web") — audit every aspect the engine is for.
- A single monolithic opinion instead of independent parallel concerns + synthesis.
- A report with scores but no roadmap, or a roadmap with no target numbers.
Outputs
- A
docs/<audit>/folder: executive summary, methodology+rubric, per-group audit, taxonomy & gap analysis, per-output-type readiness, standards benchmark, hardening plan, reading list, master scorecard (overall engine /100), and a phased roadmap to the bar.
References
references/scoring-rubric.md— the strict bar and bands.references/audit-dimensions.md— every aspect to rank + the output-type checklist.references/parallel-agent-method.md— the audit-agent fleet and how to brief it.references/report-structure.md— the multi-file report template.- Sibling skills:
skill-safety-audit,skill-writing,skill-taxonomy-and-routing,ai-slop-audit.