how to improve the entire search skill so when user says something like "research, search, investigate" it uses entire search cli. give ideas no implementation yet. also why doesn't it currently work that way

okay create a branch and make those improvements

Base directory for this skill: /Users/alisha/.claude/plugins/cache/claude-plugins-official/superpowers/6.3.0/skills/writing-skills

Writing Skills

Overview

Writing skills IS Test-Driven Development applied to process documentation.

Personal skills live in your runtime's skills directory (~/.claude/skills/ on Claude Code) — see codex-tools.md or gemini-tools.md for the path on those runtimes. Codex, Copilot CLI, and Gemini CLI all also recognize ~/.agents/skills/ as a cross-runtime alias.

You write test cases (pressure scenarios with subagents), watch them fail (baseline behavior), write the skill (documentation), watch tests pass (agents comply), and refactor (close loopholes).

Core principle: If you didn't watch an agent fail without the skill, you don't know if the skill teaches the right thing.

REQUIRED BACKGROUND: You MUST understand superpowers:test-driven-development before using this skill. That skill defines the fundamental RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycle. This skill adapts TDD to documentation.

Official guidance: For Anthropic's official skill authoring best practices, see anthropic-best-practices.md. This document provides additional patterns and guidelines that complement the TDD-focused approach in this skill.

What is a Skill?

A skill is a reference guide for proven techniques, patterns, or tools. Skills help future agents find and apply effective approaches.

Skills are: Reusable techniques, patterns, tools, reference guides

Skills are NOT: Narratives about how you solved a problem once

TDD Mapping for Skills

The entire skill creation process follows RED-GREEN-REFACTOR.

When to Create a Skill

Create when:

• Technique wasn't intuitively obvious to you
• You'd reference this again across projects
• Pattern applies broadly (not project-specific)
• Others would benefit

Don't create for:

• One-off solutions
• Standard practices well-documented elsewhere
• Project-specific conventions (put in your instructions file)
• Mechanical constraints (if it's enforceable with regex/validation, automate it—save documentation for judgment calls)

Skill Types

Technique

Concrete method with steps to follow (condition-based-waiting, root-cause-tracing)

Pattern

Way of thinking about problems (flatten-with-flags, test-invariants)

Reference

API docs, syntax guides, tool documentation (office docs)

Directory Structure

Flat namespace - all skills in one searchable namespace

Separate files for:

1. Heavy reference (100+ lines) - API docs, comprehensive syntax
2. Reusable tools - Scripts, utilities, templates

Keep inline:

• Principles and concepts
• Code patterns (< 50 lines)
• Everything else

SKILL.md Structure

Frontmatter (YAML):

• Two required fields: name and description (see agentskills.io/specification for all supported fields)
• Max 1024 characters total
• name: Use letters, numbers, and hyphens only (no parentheses, special chars)
• description: Third-person, describes ONLY when to use (NOT what it does)
  • Start with "Use when..." to focus on triggering conditions
  • Include specific symptoms, situations, and contexts
  • NEVER summarize the skill's process or workflow (see SDO section for why)
  • Keep under 500 characters if possible

Skill Discovery Optimization (SDO)

Critical for discovery: Future agents need to FIND your skill

1. Rich Description Field

Purpose: Your agent reads the description to decide which skills to load for a given task. Make it answer: "Should I read this skill right now?"

Format: Start with "Use when..." to focus on triggering conditions

CRITICAL: Description = When to Use, NOT What the Skill Does

The description should ONLY describe triggering conditions. Do NOT summarize the skill's process or workflow in the description.

Why this matters: Testing revealed that when a description summarizes the skill's workflow, an agent may follow the description instead of reading the full skill content. A description saying "code review between tasks" caused an agent to do ONE review, even though the skill's flowchart clearly showed TWO reviews (spec compliance then code quality).

When the description was changed to just "Use when executing implementation plans with independent tasks" (no workflow summary), the agent correctly read the flowchart and followed the two-stage review process.

The trap: Descriptions that summarize workflow create a shortcut agents will take. The skill body becomes documentation agents skip.

Content:

• Use concrete triggers, symptoms, and situations that signal this skill applies
• Describe the problem (race conditions, inconsistent behavior) not language-specific symptoms (setTimeout, sleep)
• Keep triggers technology-agnostic unless the skill itself is technology-specific
• If skill is technology-specific, make that explicit in the trigger
• Write in third person (injected into system prompt)
• NEVER summarize the skill's process or workflow

2. Keyword Coverage

Use words an agent would search for:

• Error messages: "Hook timed out", "ENOTEMPTY", "race condition"
• Symptoms: "flaky", "hanging", "zombie", "pollution"
• Synonyms: "timeout/hang/freeze", "cleanup/teardown/afterEach"
• Tools: Actual commands, library names, file types

3. Descriptive Naming

Use active voice, verb-first:

• ✅ creating-skills not skill-creation
• ✅ condition-based-waiting not async-test-helpers

4. Token Efficiency (Critical)

Problem: getting-started and frequently-referenced skills load into EVERY conversation. Every token counts.

Target word counts:

• getting-started workflows: <150 words each
• Frequently-loaded skills: <200 words total
• Other skills: <500 words (still be concise)

Techniques:

Move details to tool help:

Use cross-references:

Compress examples:

Eliminate redundancy:

• Don't repeat what's in cross-referenced skills
• Don't explain what's obvious from command
• Don't include multiple examples of same pattern

Verification:

Name by what you DO or core insight:

• ✅ condition-based-waiting > async-test-helpers
• ✅ using-skills not skill-usage
• ✅ flatten-with-flags > data-structure-refactoring
• ✅ root-cause-tracing > debugging-techniques

Gerunds (-ing) work well for processes:

• creating-skills, testing-skills, debugging-with-logs
• Active, describes the action you're taking

5. Cross-Referencing Other Skills

When writing documentation that references other skills:

Use skill name only, with explicit requirement markers:

• ✅ Good: **REQUIRED SUB-SKILL:** Use superpowers:test-driven-development
• ✅ Good: **REQUIRED BACKGROUND:** You MUST understand superpowers:systematic-debugging
• ❌ Bad: See skills/testing/test-driven-development (unclear if required)
• ❌ Bad: @skills/testing/test-driven-development/SKILL.md (force-loads, burns context)

Why no @ links: @ syntax force-loads files immediately, consuming 200k+ context before you need them.

Flowchart Usage

Use flowcharts ONLY for:

• Non-obvious decision points
• Process loops where you might stop too early
• "When to use A vs B" decisions

Never use flowcharts for:

• Reference material → Tables, lists
• Code examples → Markdown blocks
• Linear instructions → Numbered lists
• Labels without semantic meaning (step1, helper2)

See graphviz-conventions.dot in this directory for graphviz style rules.

Visualizing for your human partner: Use render-graphs.js in this directory to render a skill's flowcharts to SVG:

Code Examples

One excellent example beats many mediocre ones

Choose most relevant language:

• Testing techniques → TypeScript/JavaScript
• System debugging → Shell/Python
• Data processing → Python

Good example:

• Complete and runnable
• Well-commented explaining WHY
• From real scenario
• Shows pattern clearly
• Ready to adapt (not generic template)

Don't:

• Implement in 5+ languages
• Create fill-in-the-blank templates
• Write contrived examples

You're good at porting - one great example is enough.

File Organization

Self-Contained Skill

When: All content fits, no heavy reference needed

Skill with Reusable Tool

When: Tool is reusable code, not just narrative

Skill with Heavy Reference

When: Reference material too large for inline

The Iron Law (Same as TDD)

This applies to NEW skills AND EDITS to existing skills.

Write skill before testing? Delete it. Start over. Edit skill without testing? Same violation.

No exceptions:

• Not for "simple additions"
• Not for "just adding a section"
• Not for "documentation updates"
• Don't keep untested changes as "reference"
• Don't "adapt" while running tests
• Delete means delete

REQUIRED BACKGROUND: The superpowers:test-driven-development skill explains why this matters. Same principles apply to documentation.

Testing All Skill Types

Different skill types need different test approaches:

Discipline-Enforcing Skills (rules/requirements)

Examples: TDD, verification-before-completion, designing-before-coding

Test with:

• Academic questions: Do they understand the rules?
• Pressure scenarios: Do they comply under stress?
• Multiple pressures combined: time + sunk cost + exhaustion
• Identify rationalizations and add explicit counters

Success criteria: Agent follows rule under maximum pressure

Technique Skills (how-to guides)

Examples: condition-based-waiting, root-cause-tracing, defensive-programming

Test with:

• Application scenarios: Can they apply the technique correctly?
• Variation scenarios: Do they handle edge cases?
• Missing information tests: Do instructions have gaps?

Success criteria: Agent successfully applies technique to new scenario

Pattern Skills (mental models)

Examples: reducing-complexity, information-hiding concepts

Test with:

• Recognition scenarios: Do they recognize when pattern applies?
• Application scenarios: Can they use the mental model?
• Counter-examples: Do they know when NOT to apply?

Success criteria: Agent correctly identifies when/how to apply pattern

Reference Skills (documentation/APIs)

Examples: API documentation, command references, library guides

Test with:

• Retrieval scenarios: Can they find the right information?
• Application scenarios: Can they use what they found correctly?
• Gap testing: Are common use cases covered?

Success criteria: Agent finds and correctly applies reference information

Common Rationalizations for Skipping Testing

All of these mean: Test before deploying. No exceptions.

Match the Form to the Failure

Before writing guidance, classify the baseline failure. The form that bulletproofs one failure type measurably backfires on another.

Why prohibitions backfire on shaping problems: under a competing incentive ("make the prompt self-contained"), agents negotiate with "don't X". In head-to-head wording tests on dispatch-prompt guidance, the prohibition arm produced clearly more of the unwanted content than the recipe arm (fully separated distributions), and trended worse than even the no-guidance control — micro-test your own case rather than assuming, but never reach for the prohibition by default. A recipe leaves nothing to negotiate: the output matches the stated shape or it doesn't.

Rules for whichever form you pick:

• No nuance clauses. "Don't X unless it matters" reopens the negotiation — appending a single nuance clause to a winning recipe degraded it from consistent to noisy in the same wording tests. Express a real exception as its own conditional on an observable predicate.
• Exemption clauses don't scope. "This limit doesn't apply to code blocks" still suppresses code blocks. If part of the output must be exempt, restructure so the rule can't reach it.

Bulletproofing Skills Against Rationalization

Skills that enforce discipline (like TDD) need to resist rationalization. Agents are smart and will find loopholes when under pressure.

Scope: this toolkit is for discipline failures — an agent that knows the rule and skips it under pressure. For wrong-shaped output or omitted elements, prohibition-based bulletproofing backfires; use the forms in Match the Form to the Failure instead.

Psychology note: Understanding WHY persuasion techniques work helps you apply them systematically. See persuasion-principles.md for research foundation (Cialdini, 2021; Meincke et al., 2025) on authority, commitment, scarcity, social proof, and unity principles.

Close Every Loophole Explicitly

Don't just state the rule - forbid specific workarounds:

No exceptions:

• Don't keep it as "reference"
• Don't "adapt" it while writing tests
• Don't look at it
• Delete means delete

This cuts off entire class of "I'm following the spirit" rationalizations.

Build Rationalization Table

Capture rationalizations from baseline testing (see Testing section below). Every excuse agents make goes in the table:

Create Red Flags List

Make it easy for agents to self-check when rationalizing:

Update SDO for Violation Symptoms

Add to description: symptoms of when you're ABOUT to violate the rule:

RED-GREEN-REFACTOR for Skills

Follow the TDD cycle:

RED: Write Failing Test (Baseline)

Run pressure scenario with subagent WITHOUT the skill. Document exact behavior:

• What choices did they make?
• What rationalizations did they use (verbatim)?
• Which pressures triggered violations?

This is "watch the test fail" - you must see what agents naturally do before writing the skill.

GREEN: Write Minimal Skill

Write skill that addresses those specific rationalizations. Don't add extra content for hypothetical cases.

Run same scenarios WITH skill. Agent should now comply.

REFACTOR: Close Loopholes

Agent found new rationalization? Add explicit counter. Re-test until bulletproof.

Micro-Test Wording Before Full Scenarios

Full pressure-scenario runs are the final gate, but they are slow and expensive per iteration. Verify the wording itself first with micro-tests:

1. One fresh-context sample per call — a raw API call, or a single-shot subagent if you don't have API access. System prompt = the realistic context the guidance will live in (the full skill or prompt template, not the guidance in isolation); user message = a task that tempts the failure.
2. Always include a no-guidance control. If the control doesn't exhibit the failure, there is nothing to fix — stop, don't author the guidance.
3. 5+ reps per variant. Single samples lie.
4. Manually read every flagged match. Score programmatically if you like, but template echoes and quoted counter-examples masquerade as hits; automated counts alone overstate both failure and success.
5. Variance is a metric. When guidance lands, reps converge on the same shape. Five different interpretations across five reps means the wording isn't binding — tighten the form before adding words.

Micro-tests verify wording; they do not replace pressure scenarios for discipline skills.

Testing methodology: See testing-skills-with-subagents.md for the complete testing methodology:

• How to write pressure scenarios
• Pressure types (time, sunk cost, authority, exhaustion)
• Plugging holes systematically
• Meta-testing techniques

Anti-Patterns

❌ Narrative Example

"In session 2025-10-03, we found empty projectDir caused..." Why bad: Too specific, not reusable

❌ Multi-Language Dilution

example-js.js, example-py.py, example-go.go Why bad: Mediocre quality, maintenance burden

❌ Code in Flowcharts

Why bad: Can't copy-paste, hard to read

❌ Generic Labels

helper1, helper2, step3, pattern4 Why bad: Labels should have semantic meaning

STOP: Before Moving to Next Skill

After writing ANY skill, you MUST STOP and complete the deployment process.

Do NOT:

• Create multiple skills in batch without testing each
• Move to next skill before current one is verified
• Skip testing because "batching is more efficient"

The deployment checklist below is MANDATORY for EACH skill.

Deploying untested skills = deploying untested code. It's a violation of quality standards.

Skill Creation Checklist (TDD Adapted)

IMPORTANT: Create a todo for EACH checklist item below.

RED Phase - Write Failing Test:

• Create pressure scenarios (3+ combined pressures for discipline skills)
• Run scenarios WITHOUT skill - document baseline behavior verbatim
• Identify patterns in rationalizations/failures

GREEN Phase - Write Minimal Skill:

• Name uses only letters, numbers, hyphens (no parentheses/special chars)
• YAML frontmatter with required name and description fields (max 1024 chars; see spec)
• Description starts with "Use when..." and includes specific triggers/symptoms
• Description written in third person
• Keywords throughout for search (errors, symptoms, tools)
• Clear overview with core principle
• Address specific baseline failures identified in RED
• Guidance form matches the failure type (see Match the Form to the Failure)
• For behavior-shaping guidance: wording micro-tested against a no-guidance control (5+ reps, every flagged match read manually) — N/A for pure reference skills
• Code inline OR link to separate file
• One excellent example (not multi-language)
• Run scenarios WITH skill - verify agents now comply

REFACTOR Phase - Close Loopholes:

• Identify NEW rationalizations from testing
• Add explicit counters (if discipline skill)
• Build rationalization table from all test iterations
• Create red flags list
• Re-test until bulletproof

Quality Checks:

• Small flowchart only if decision non-obvious
• Quick reference table
• Common mistakes section
• No narrative storytelling
• Supporting files only for tools or heavy reference

Deployment:

• Commit skill to git and push to your fork (if configured)
• Consider contributing back via PR (if broadly useful)

Discovery Workflow

How future agents find your skill:

1. Encounters problem ("tests are flaky")
2. Searches skills (greps descriptions, browses categories)
3. Finds SKILL (description matches)
4. Scans overview (is this relevant?)
5. Reads patterns (quick reference table)
6. Loads example (only when implementing)

Optimize for this flow - put searchable terms early and often.

Base directory for this skill: /Users/alisha/.claude/skills/rubber-duck

Rubber Duck

The user is looking at something dense — usually a long agent response or a findings dump — and wants to understand it, not act on it. Your whole job is to be the clear, patient explainer and then a sounding board for their questions. Think out loud with them, in plain language.

The one job

Turn the wall of text into something a smart person with no context can follow in under a minute, then answer whatever they ask next — still briefly.

Hard rules (do not break these)

• Do NOT write a plan, and do NOT enter plan mode. No ExitPlanMode, no writing-plans/brainstorming skills, no "here's how we'd fix it" roadmaps.
• Do NOT change code, run builds, or edit files. This is understanding only.
• Do NOT make a todo list. It's a conversation, not a task.
• Stay read-only. Reading a file or scrolling the text to explain it is fine. Anything that does something is not.
• Be concise — this is the point of the skill. You are the antidote to the wall of text, so don't produce another one. Lead with the answer. Short sentences. No preamble, no "great question", no restating the question back.
• Plain language over jargon. No file paths, line numbers, symbol names, or code snippets unless the user asks for them. Names of systems/people are fine; citations are not. (This is the same spirit as the architecture-findings skill — the story, not the lookup table.)

First explanation — the format

Keep it to roughly this, and stop:

1. One-line TL;DR. The single most important thing, first.
2. 3–5 short bullets covering: what's actually going on, why it matters, and (if relevant) what's broken or being decided. One idea per bullet.
3. One line on "so what" — the upshot, or the decision in front of them.

If the source genuinely has more than fits, say "there's more detail under X if you want it" and let them pull it — don't push it.

Use an analogy when it makes a hard idea click. Skip it when it doesn't.

The follow-up loop

After the first explanation, they'll ask things. For each:

• Answer the specific question and nothing more. One concept at a time.
• Stay just as concise — don't let answers creep back into walls of text.
• It's fine to say "not sure / the text doesn't say" rather than guess.
• If a question needs you to look something up to answer honestly, look (read only), then answer plainly.

Keep going as long as they're asking. You're the duck — they're thinking out loud and you're helping them see it.

When they're ready to act

The moment the user shifts from "help me understand" to "okay let's fix/build/ plan this," rubber-duck mode is over. Don't quietly start doing it inside this mode. Say something like: "That's action territory — want me to pick up that work?" and let them start the real task (a plan, a dispatch, an edit) as its own thing. Your job here ends at understanding.

can you also add search to the key words / description. so if I say "search x" also do the test pass without the hook?

id like it to work without the hook

still running?

remvoe hook

can you install it under search-test in my global claude so I can try it out. remove the current search-version

create a pr

Base directory for this skill: /Users/alisha/.claude/plugins/cache/entire-internal/entire-internal/1.4.1/skills/github-pr-review

GitHub PR Review

GitHub PR interaction via gh CLI. For evaluating feedback, use superpowers:receiving-code-review.

Commands

Scripts are executable — invoke them directly using their full path (e.g. /path/to/pr-info), not via bash /path/to/pr-info.

Review threads (inline code comments)

thread_id and reply_to_id come from pr-threads output.

General PR conversation

PR management

Workflow: Respond to PR Review

1. Get context: pr-info
2. Fetch threads needing response: pr-threads with author filter
3. For each thread: pr-thread to read full conversation + diff context
   • Group related threads (e.g. same line from multiple comments)
   • Use superpowers:receiving-code-review for evaluation
   • IMPORTANT: Step through grouped feedback one by one with the user
   • Fix code and/or note reply
4. Commit and push fixes (need commit shas for replies)
5. If rebased: re-fetch threads — comment IDs change after force-push
6. Reply to each thread: pr-reply using reply_to_id from thread, with commit ref + description
7. Ask if ready to mark PR as ready for review

Common Mistakes

Setup (One-Time)

Fine-grained PAT at github.com → Settings → Developer settings → Fine-grained tokens:

Permissions are configured in the plugin's settings.json.

how can I run evals

did you increase version

okay so if I merge this pr then something else handles bumping the version

yes