Skill Readiness Analyzer

Production readiness scanner for AI Agent Skills - Quality gates, best practices compliance, and operational excellence for the Agent Skills ecosystem.

Beyond security: Ensure your skills are production-ready, efficient, and follow best practices.

Why Skill Readiness Analyzer?

Security scanning catches malicious code. Readiness scanning ensures skills are production-quality:

• Token Efficiency - Keep skills under context limits
• Best Practices - Follow Anthropic/Cursor guidelines
• Cross-Platform - Work on Claude, Cursor, Codex, and more
• Documentation Quality - Clear descriptions and triggers
• Script Reliability - Error handling in utility scripts

Complementary to security scanning: This tool focuses on operational quality and best practices. For security analysis (prompt injection, data exfiltration, malicious code), use dedicated security scanners.

Quick Start

Installation

pip install skill-readiness-analyzer

Scan a Skill

# Scan single skill
skill-readiness scan /path/to/my-skill/

# Scan all skills in directory
skill-readiness scan-skills /path/to/skills/

# Output as SARIF for GitHub Code Scanning
skill-readiness scan /path/to/skill --format sarif --output results.sarif

Example Output

============================================================
Skill: my-project-skill
============================================================
Readiness Score: 72/100 (NEEDS IMPROVEMENT)

HIGH: SRDNS-005 - Description missing activation context
    → Description lacks "Use when..." clause
    → Location: SKILL.md:description
    → Remediation: Add trigger scenarios to description

MEDIUM: SRDNS-001 - SKILL.md exceeds recommended length
    → SKILL.md has 847 lines (recommended: <500)
    → Location: SKILL.md
    → Remediation: Use progressive disclosure with file references

MEDIUM: SRDNS-003 - No progressive disclosure utilized
    → Large skill with no file references found
    → Remediation: Consider splitting detailed content into reference.md

Readiness Categories

Category	Description	Severity
token-footprint	SKILL.md exceeds size limits	MEDIUM
progressive-disclosure	Content not split into references	MEDIUM
description-quality	Missing triggers, wrong person	HIGH
platform-compatibility	Uses platform-specific features	MEDIUM
dependency-completeness	Missing tool/MCP declarations	HIGH
instruction-clarity	Ambiguous or conflicting	MEDIUM
metadata-validation	Invalid frontmatter	HIGH
reference-depth	Nested references	LOW
terminology-consistency	Mixed terminology	LOW
script-reliability	Scripts lack error handling	MEDIUM

Heuristic Rules

15 built-in checks based on Anthropic/Cursor best practices:

Rule	Check
SRDNS-001	SKILL.md exceeds 500 lines
SRDNS-002	Token count exceeds 2000
SRDNS-003	No file references for large skills
SRDNS-004	Large code blocks inline (>50 lines)
SRDNS-005	Description missing "Use when..."
SRDNS-006	Description uses first/second person
SRDNS-007	Description too short (<50 chars)
SRDNS-008	Missing required name field
SRDNS-009	Missing required description field
SRDNS-010	Invalid name format
SRDNS-011	Nested references detected
SRDNS-012	Mixed terminology
SRDNS-013	Conflicting instructions
SRDNS-014	Python script missing try/except
SRDNS-015	Shell script missing set -e

Readiness Score

Skills are scored 0-100 based on findings:

Score	Label	Meaning
90-100	Production Ready	Ship it!
70-89	Needs Improvement	Fix high-severity issues
50-69	Significant Issues	Major rework needed
0-49	Not Ready	Start over or fix critical issues

Penalties:

• CRITICAL: -25 points
• HIGH: -15 points
• MEDIUM: -8 points
• LOW: -3 points

CI/CD Integration

GitHub Actions

name: Skill Readiness

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  readiness:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: '3.11'

      - name: Install skill-readiness-analyzer
        run: pip install skill-readiness-analyzer

      - name: Scan skills
        run: |
          skill-readiness scan .cursor/skills/my-skill \
            --format sarif \
            --output results.sarif \
            --fail-on high

      - name: Upload SARIF
        uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
        with:
          sarif_file: results.sarif

Using the Action

- uses: nik-kale/skill-readiness-analyzer@v1
  with:
    path: .cursor/skills/my-skill
    fail-on: high

Output Formats

Summary (default)

Human-readable console output with colors and emojis.

JSON

skill-readiness scan /path/to/skill --format json

Markdown

skill-readiness scan /path/to/skill --format markdown

SARIF

For GitHub Code Scanning integration:

skill-readiness scan /path/to/skill --format sarif --output results.sarif

CLI Reference

# Scan single skill
skill-readiness scan PATH [OPTIONS]
  --format, -f [summary|json|markdown|sarif]
  --output, -o FILE
  --verbose, -v
  --fail-on [critical|high|medium|low]

# Scan multiple skills
skill-readiness scan-skills PATH [OPTIONS]
  --glob, -g PATTERN    # Default: */SKILL.md
  --format, -f [summary|json|markdown]
  --output, -o FILE
  --verbose, -v

# List categories
skill-readiness list-categories

# List providers
skill-readiness list-providers

# Generate config file
skill-readiness init [--format toml|yaml]

Configuration

Create .skill-readiness.toml:

[scan]
timeout_seconds = 30.0

[output]
format = "summary"
verbose = false

[heuristic]
max_lines = 500
max_tokens = 2000
min_description_length = 50

[fail]
severity = "high"

Programmatic Usage

from skillreadiness.core.orchestrator import get_orchestrator
from skillreadiness.reports import render_markdown

orchestrator = get_orchestrator()
result = orchestrator.scan_skill_sync("/path/to/skill")

print(f"Score: {result.readiness_score}/100")
print(f"Status: {result.readiness_label}")

for finding in result.findings:
    print(f"[{finding.severity.value}] {finding.title}")

report = render_markdown(result, verbose=True)
print(report)

Best Practices Reference

This tool implements checks based on:

1. Anthropic's Agent Skills Guidelines - Progressive disclosure, token efficiency
2. Cursor's create-skill SKILL.md - Description quality, metadata validation
3. Agent Skills Specification - Schema validation, compatibility

Key best practices enforced:

• Keep SKILL.md under 500 lines
• Write descriptions in third person
• Include "Use when..." activation context
• Use file references for detailed content
• Add error handling to scripts
• Declare all dependencies

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Areas of interest:

• Additional heuristic rules
• Platform compatibility checks
• YARA rules for pattern detection
• LLM-based semantic analysis

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

Ecosystem

This tool is part of a broader quality ecosystem for AI agents:

Tool	Focus	Use Case
skill-readiness-analyzer	Operational quality	Best practices, efficiency, compatibility
mcp-readiness-scanner	MCP operational quality	Production readiness for MCP tools

For security-focused analysis of Agent Skills and MCP servers, the community has developed dedicated security scanning tools.