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skill-authoring

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Author, audit, and improve Grafana SKILL.md files against Anthropic's published Agent Skills guidance and the four-dimension rubric the grafana/skills CI gate uses (conciseness, actionability, workflow clarity, progressive disclosure). Applies the canonical SKILL.md structure (YAML frontmatter + body + references/ + scripts/ + assets/), the "pushy description" trigger pattern, the three-level progressive-disclosure model, and the validate-fix-rerun feedback loop. Use when creating a new skill in this repo, when reviewing a skill PR, when a skill's Tessl review score is below 75 (the merge gate), when a skill's description isn't getting picked up by agents, when restructuring a long SKILL.md into a bundle, or when the user asks how to write, improve, optimize, audit, or fix a skill - even if they don't say "skill" explicitly (e.g. "this isn't triggering", "Tessl scored this 72", "split this doc").

skills/grafana-core/skill-authoring/SKILL.md

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Nov 9, 2026
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Apache-2.0

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# Authoring & Improving Grafana Skills

How to write, review, and improve SKILL.md files so they pass the repo's CI gate and score well against the Anthropic-aligned rubric Tessl uses.

## Critical rules (always)

1. **Description is the primary trigger** — third-person, ≤1024 chars, must include explicit "Use when..." phrasing AND list concrete trigger terms users naturally say. See [references/descriptions.md](references/descriptions.md) for the pushy-description pattern that combats undertriggering.
2. **Body under 500 lines** — split into `references/*.md` if approaching the limit. SKILL.md is the routing layer, not the entire knowledge base.
3. **One level of nesting for references** — link from SKILL.md directly, never `SKILL.md → a.md → b.md`. Claude may use `head -100` previews on nested chains and miss content.
4. **Imperative voice** — "Run X" not "You should run X" not "It is important to run X". Explain *why* over heavy-handed `MUST` markers.
5. **Concrete examples beat prose** — copy-paste-ready commands, real config snippets. Tessl's `actionability` dimension scores this directly.
6. **No reserved words in `name`** — `anthropic` and `claude` are forbidden in skill names.
7. **No time-sensitive language in the body** — "after August 2025…" rots. Use an `<details>` "Old patterns" section for legacy info instead.
8. **Validate before committing** — `./scripts/lint-skills.sh skills/<plugin>/<your-skill>` clean + Tessl score ≥75 (run `tessl skill review --json <dir>`).
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