Schliff

Deterministic linter and scorer for instruction files — SKILL.md, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md. No model in the loop: the same bytes score the same everywhere. Use for linting, scoring, auditing or CI-gating an instruction file, and for checking whether the commands a file promises actually resolve in the repo. Trigger phrases: "lint my skill", "score my skill", "audit skill", "review my skill", "harden skill", "make this skill better", "optimize my skill", "improve [metric] from X to Y", "benchmark skill", "check my AGENTS.md", "is my AGENTS.md lying", or paste a SKILL.md for auto-analysis. Also use when a user shares an instruction file without explicit instructions. Do NOT use for authoring a file from scratch — use a skill-creator first, then schliff. Do NOT use for application-code linting, SQL tuning, or runtime behaviour testing.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add Zandereins/schliff --skill schliff

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

15 stars15 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

SKILL.md

4.1 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

schliff — deterministic instruction-file linter

Zero install, no API key, no model in the loop — the same bytes score the same everywhere.

Commands

These run anywhere uv is available: no plugin, no checkout. Add --json to any of them for machine-readable output.

uvx schliff score <file> — score one instruction file, per-dimension breakdown
uvx schliff doctor --skill-dirs <dir> — grade every skill in a directory
uvx schliff verify <file> --min-score 75 — CI gate; exits 1 below the threshold
uvx schliff check-commands <file> --repo <dir> — do the file's commands resolve?
uvx schliff suggest <file> — ranked fixes with estimated score impact
uvx schliff badge <file> — markdown score badge
uvx schliff compare <a> <b> — two files side by side
uvx schliff demo — score a built-in bad skill to see the output shape

Pin the version in CI: uvx [email protected] verify <file> --min-score 75.

Examples

Example 1 — score a skill:

$ uvx schliff score SKILL.md
  structure      95/100    triggers   95/100    quality  90/100
  Structural Score  87.4/100  [A]        Tokens: 1,044 / 2,000 (ok)

Grades run S · A · B · C · D · E · F. 4/7 dims in the readout means no eval suite was found beside the file, so only the deterministic dimensions could be measured and the score is capped — a coverage statement, not a quality verdict. verify scales its threshold by that same coverage, so a missing eval suite never fails CI on its own.

Example 2 — is the file telling the truth?

$ uvx schliff check-commands AGENTS.md --repo .
  resolved   'make test'      make target 'test' defined in Makefile
  dangling   'npm run lint'   package.json has no script 'lint'

dangling is claimed only when absence is provable; anything unresolvable is reported unknown, never as a defect.

Workflow

uvx schliff doctor --skill-dirs <dir> — find the worst file.
uvx schliff suggest <file> — see the ranked fixes and their impact.
Apply them, then uvx schliff score <file> to confirm the delta.
Gate it: uvx schliff verify <file> --min-score 75 in CI.

If the schliff plugin is installed

Only inside a Claude Code plugin install — unavailable on the uvx path above: /schliff:analyze · /schliff:doctor · /schliff:init · /schliff:bench · /schliff:eval · /schliff:report · /schliff:mesh · /schliff:triage · /schliff:auto

Contract

Expects one instruction-file path, or --skill-dirs <dir> for doctor. Produces per-dimension scores, a composite grade, and a gate-usable exit code. Errors go to stderr as one line with a non-zero exit.

Scope

Use when measuring or gating the quality or honesty of an instruction file. Do not use for authoring from scratch, application-code linting, or runtime behaviour testing. schliff measures — it does not write.

Handoffs

No file to score yet → instead use a skill-creator skill to author one, then come back to schliff to measure it.
Score plateaus after the suggested fixes → then use a skill-authoring or writing skill; the remaining gap is content, not structure.
check-commands reports dangling → fix the file or the repo, re-run it.
Any non-zero exit → report the stderr line verbatim; it names the cause.