Automated Assessment Skill

Systematic compliance assessment against checkpoint-enabled skills.

Usage

/assess                              # All matching skills
/assess skill-repo typo3-testing     # Specific skills only
/assess --force                      # Ignore preconditions
/assess --mechanical-only            # Scripted checks only
/assess --autofix                    # Fix issues automatically
/assess --review                     # Categorize failures
/assess --autoimprove                # Fix + propose improvements
/assess dependency-compatibility     # Dependency compat checks
/assess --pre-push                   # Pre-push validation gate
/assess --check-coverage             # Verify checkpoint coverage

Options

Steps

1. Discover skills, evaluate preconditions
2. Run mechanical checkpoints
3. Group LLM checkpoints by domain, spawn parallel agents
4. Collect results, generate report

Assessment-First Rule

CRITICAL: Run /assess BEFORE manual quality work (enhance tests, improve coverage, strengthen suite, upgrade PHPStan, etc.). Assessment generates a structured gap analysis, preventing wasted iterative discovery.

Workflow

1. /assess with relevant skills
2. Review gap report — this becomes the task list
3. Fix in priority order (errors before warnings; use --autofix for automated resolution)
4. Re-run /assess to verify

When nothing offered fits, say so

Name no skill rather than the nearest one. If no available skill's checkpoints cover the request, report that and stop. Substituting an adjacent domain skill scored below having no skill at all in a measured ablation — see references/capability-selection.md.

This verdict is reached before any checkpoint runs, so there is no run to serialise: --json has no report to emit and the answer is prose to the caller, naming the gap and the near misses. Do not synthesise a skill_gaps row for it — that shape carries the skill whose checkpoint failed, and here no skill was selected and nothing was measured.

Running one skill's checks without /assess

The one-hop form is the slash command with the skill named — /assess typo3-extension-upgrade — and it is the one to reach for from inside another skill's workflow. It needs no path.

The direct call exists for scripts and for harnesses that have no slash commands. It takes the sibling path from the loader's base directory, the checkpoint file, and the project root as the last argument, and every target: resolves against that root — run it from anywhere else and the checks read the wrong tree. The checkpoint file is the one the skill's front-matter names under checkpoints:, and only where it names none is it checkpoints.yaml at the skill's base directory (the discovery rule in references/checkpoint-workflow.md); passing the root-level file to a skill that overrides it runs the wrong file or none.

cd <project-root>
"$SKILL_DIR/../automated-assessment/scripts/run-checkpoints.sh" --force \
  "<the checkpoint file that rule resolves to>" .

Measured, and the reason the slash command is named first: the direct form, placed as a step in a skill body, was in the agent's context in three of three trials and attempted in none — no trial in twelve bound a variable of any kind, so a path that has to be assembled is a path that is not taken. The same check written into the body as a block that runs as pasted was run three of three. --force skips preconditions where the caller already knows they hold; --json for a machine-readable report. Each result line carries the checkpoint id, its desc, and an evidence string; for a script-type check that evidence is only "Script failed" — the runner does not pass the script's own output through — so the check's desc is what tells you where to look. A blocked line means the runner refused the command and the check never ran.

Checkpoint Types

Mechanical: file_exists, file_not_exists, contains, not_contains, regex, json_path, gh_api, command. LLM: llm_review (grouped by domain). See references/checkpoints-schema.md.

Domains

repo-health security code-quality documentation git-workflow docker ddev upgrade dependency-compatibility pre-push

Autofix & Review

--autofix invokes responsible skill for failures, re-verifies. Statuses: auto-fixed, needs-review, unfixable. --review/--autoimprove create feedback loops.

Pre-Push Gate

Only installed tools (vendor/bin/*) are checked. Missing tools pass. IDs: PP-01 (PHPStan), PP-02 (PHPUnit), PP-03 (PHP-CS-Fixer), PP-04 (Rector).

Severity

error = blocks release, warning = recommendation, info = optional.

Outcomes

pass fail skip blocked — counted separately (total == pass + fail + skip + blocked). A command whose executable does not exist (vendor/bin/* without Composer, a tool not on PATH) is skip with evidence executable not found: <word>, not a finding.

Never report a blocked checkpoint as a finding. It means the runner refused the command through its allowlist, so nothing was measured: the defect is in the checkpoint file, not in the assessed project. Report blocked checkpoints as broken checks, run scripts/validate-checkpoints.sh <file> against the owning skill, and file them there. A refused precondition is the same thing one level up — the JSON reason says REFUSED by the runner allowlist, which is not the same as "this skill does not apply". See references/checkpoints-schema.md → "Outcomes".

References

• references/checkpoints-schema.md -- Checkpoint YAML schema and types
• references/learning-derived-checkpoints.md -- Retro-to-checkpoint routing contract
• references/checkpoint-coverage-requirements.md -- Required coverage categories per skill
• references/capability-selection.md -- Why declining beats substituting, with the ablation that measured it
• references/checkpoint-workflow.md -- Full assessment workflow with autofix loop
• references/calibration.md -- Calibration debt, audit cadence, anchor at generation time, ratchet anti-pattern
• references/dependency-compatibility.md -- Multi-major-version assessment trigger
• references/migration-guide.md -- Adding checkpoints to existing skills
• references/verification-patterns.md -- Verification patterns and result schemas