Skip to content

feat: add applying-coding-baseline skill (6 curated rules) - #22

Merged
ether-moon merged 2 commits into
mainfrom
augment-directives-skill
May 6, 2026
Merged

feat: add applying-coding-baseline skill (6 curated rules)#22
ether-moon merged 2 commits into
mainfrom
augment-directives-skill

Conversation

@ether-moon

@ether-moon ether-moon commented May 6, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Owner

Summary

A new skill that applies a curated, pre-vetted set of baseline behavioral discipline rules to coding agent directive files (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, referenced documents). When semantically similar content already exists, replaces it with the standard canonical wording so coverage stays complete and consistent across projects.

The set is data-driven via reference/baseline-rules.md — adding a new rule is a one-section append, no code changes needed.

Curated Rules (6)

# Rule Mistakes Prevented
1 Think Before Coding Hidden assumptions; silent picks among interpretations
2 Simplicity First Speculative features; abstractions; over-defending; defensive logging
3 Surgical Changes Unrelated improvements; style drift
4 Goal-Driven Execution Vague success criteria; "make it work" loops
5 Fail Fast vs Graceful Handling Swallowed internal bugs; brittle reactions to external failures
6 Documentation Priority Redundant comments; missing rationale; prose where a test or rename would suffice

Changes

  • plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/SKILL.md (120 lines) — skill workflow with 5 steps, edge cases, and reuse map
  • plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/reference/baseline-rules.md (258 lines) — canonical text + detection keywords for each of the 6 rules, plus extension protocol
  • AGENTS.md — registered the new skill in the skills list and project structure section

Design Choices

  • Skips guarding-agent-directives verification: the rule set is pre-vetted by construction; user authority is preserved via per-rule opt-out at Step 4
  • Replaces (not just inserts) on semantic match: normalizes ad-hoc rules across projects to the canonical wording
  • Framework-neutral: removed Ruby/Rails-specific terms (YARD, Rails logging) in favor of universal concepts (API doc comments, framework-handled logging)
  • Data-driven extension: reference/baseline-rules.md is the single source of canonical content — appending a section adds a new rule with no code changes

Validation

Ran a 3-case skill-creator eval loop with 6 parallel subagents (3 with-skill, 3 baseline):

Metric With Skill Baseline Delta
Pass rate 100% (20/20) 35% (7/20) +65pp
Avg time 39.8s 51.4s -11.7s
Avg tokens 52,224 47,488 +4,736

Without the skill, agents improvised entirely different rule sets each time (14-section AGENTS.md, 11-section CLAUDE.md). The skill prevents this divergence.

Validated against creating-skills checklist — all items pass.

Test Plan

  • Invoke skill on a fresh repo (no CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md) — verify it offers to create CLAUDE.md with all 6 canonical rules
  • Invoke on a repo with similar but non-canonical wording — verify REPLACE behavior preserves unrelated sections and uses canonical phrasing
  • Invoke on a repo that already has all 6 canonical rules — verify SKIP behavior leaves the file unchanged
  • Verify guarding-agent-directives is NOT invoked during the workflow
  • Confirm extension: append a ## Rule 7 section to baseline-rules.md and re-invoke; new rule is picked up automatically

Summary by CodeRabbit

  • Documentation
    • Introduced comprehensive documentation for the applying-coding-baseline skill with detailed guides for applying pre-vetted coding discipline standards to key files.
    • Added baseline coding discipline rules reference documentation covering six core principles, insertion protocols, verification procedures, and edge-case handling guidance.
    • Reorganized skills section with updated references and expanded project structure.

…ine rules

A new skill that applies a pre-vetted set of baseline behavioral
discipline rules to coding agent directive files (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md,
referenced documents). Replaces semantically similar existing content
with canonical wording so coverage stays complete and consistent across
projects.

The 6 curated rules:
1. Think Before Coding
2. Simplicity First (incl. no over-defending and no defensive logging)
3. Surgical Changes
4. Goal-Driven Execution
5. Fail Fast vs Graceful Handling
6. Documentation Priority

The skill skips guarding-agent-directives verification because the rule
set is pre-vetted by construction. New rules can be added by appending a
section to reference/baseline-rules.md — no other code changes required.
@coderabbitai

coderabbitai Bot commented May 6, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown

Warning

Rate limit exceeded

@ether-moon has exceeded the limit for the number of commits that can be reviewed per hour. Please wait 52 minutes and 16 seconds before requesting another review.

To continue reviewing without waiting, purchase usage credits in the billing tab.

⌛ How to resolve this issue?

After the wait time has elapsed, a review can be triggered using the @coderabbitai review command as a PR comment. Alternatively, push new commits to this PR.

We recommend that you space out your commits to avoid hitting the rate limit.

🚦 How do rate limits work?

CodeRabbit enforces hourly rate limits for each developer per organization.

Our paid plans have higher rate limits than the trial, open-source and free plans. In all cases, we re-allow further reviews after a brief timeout.

Please see our FAQ for further information.

ℹ️ Review info
⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: f2b25113-5320-41c7-a8f3-f8c776bdc39e

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between b3f457c and da9887f.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)
  • AGENTS.md
  • plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/SKILL.md
📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The PR introduces a new "applying-coding-baseline" skill that establishes standardized coding discipline rules. AGENTS.md is updated to list and reference this skill. Two new documentation files define the skill's workflow (SKILL.md) and provide a reference set of six canonical coding rules (baseline-rules.md) with insertion protocols and detection keywords.

Changes

Applying Coding Baseline Skill

Layer / File(s) Summary
Skill Registry
AGENTS.md
Registers applying-coding-baseline as a new skill (position 9) and adds project structure references to SKILL.md and baseline-rules.md under skills/applying-coding-baseline/.
Skill Definition
plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/SKILL.md
Defines the applying-coding-baseline skill with workflow (detect, load rules, scan, plan, apply), trigger phrases, insertion frame guidance, edge cases, and extension behavior for modifying directive files.
Rule Reference
plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/reference/baseline-rules.md
Provides canonical text and detection keywords for six baseline rules (Think Before Coding, Simplicity First, Surgical Changes, Goal-Driven Execution, Fail Fast vs Graceful Handling, Documentation Priority), insertion frame format, and protocol for extending rules.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 3 (Moderate) | ⏱️ ~20 minutes

Possibly related PRs

  • ether-moon/skill-set#10: Updates the skills directory structure and AGENTS.md similarly, suggesting related plugin infrastructure work.

Poem

A baseline is born, a discipline true,
Six rules now crystallized in baseline hue. 🐰✨
Think before code, keep changes so slight,
Documentation shines—the coder's true light!

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5
✅ Passed checks (5 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Description Check ✅ Passed Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check ✅ Passed The title accurately summarizes the main change: adding a new 'applying-coding-baseline' skill with six curated rules. It is concise, specific, and clearly conveys the primary contribution to anyone reviewing the changeset.
Docstring Coverage ✅ Passed No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✏️ Tip: You can configure your own custom pre-merge checks in the settings.

✨ Finishing Touches
🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)
  • Create PR with unit tests
  • Commit unit tests in branch augment-directives-skill

Thanks for using CodeRabbit! It's free for OSS, and your support helps us grow. If you like it, consider giving us a shout-out.

❤️ Share

Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands and usage tips.

@coderabbitai coderabbitai Bot left a comment

Copy link
Copy Markdown

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Actionable comments posted: 3

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@AGENTS.md`:
- Line 18: Update the "applying-coding-baseline" capability description to list
all six baseline rules instead of four: include "Fail Fast vs Graceful Handling"
and "Documentation Priority" alongside "Think Before Coding", "Simplicity
First", "Surgical Changes", and "Goal-Driven Execution"; edit the sentence that
currently reads "Applies a curated, pre-vetted set of baseline behavioral
discipline rules (Think Before Coding, Simplicity First, Surgical Changes,
Goal-Driven Execution)..." to enumerate all six and keep the rest of the
phrasing intact so the registered capability accurately reflects the baseline.

In `@plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/SKILL.md`:
- Around line 64-72: The fenced code block in SKILL.md is unlabeled and triggers
markdownlint MD040; add an explicit language identifier (e.g., "text" or
"markdown") to the opening triple backticks for the Plan block so the linter
recognizes the fence, e.g., change ``` to ```text, leaving the block contents
unchanged; ensure the same identifier is used for that specific fenced block to
silence MD040.
- Line 3: The frontmatter description in SKILL.md currently lists four rules but
the skill applies six; update the description (the "description:" frontmatter
line) to either enumerate all six rules including Rule 5 and Rule 6 or replace
the explicit list with wording like "the canonical baseline set" to avoid
metadata drift; edit the description text in SKILL.md to reflect the full
canonical rule set so the metadata stays accurate and consistent with the
skill's actual behavior.
🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

  • Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
  • Create a new PR with the fixes

ℹ️ Review info
⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: e29ddc21-92fd-479f-b850-b5da6f4a6a42

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 79e923a and b3f457c.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)
  • AGENTS.md
  • plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/SKILL.md
  • plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/reference/baseline-rules.md

Comment thread AGENTS.md Outdated
Comment thread plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/SKILL.md Outdated
Comment thread plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/SKILL.md Outdated
- AGENTS.md: enumerate all 6 baseline rules in skill summary (was 4)
- SKILL.md frontmatter: enumerate all 6 baseline rules in description (was 4)
- SKILL.md: add `text` language identifier to fenced Plan block (MD040)
@ether-moon

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Owner Author

@coderabbitai resolve

Review feedback resolution — cycle 1

Processed 3 actionable CodeRabbit comments. All classified as OBVIOUS by the autofixing-and-escalating skill (factual corrections + lint compliance, no design judgment required) and auto-applied.

Auto-applied (3)

  • AGENTS.md line 18 (reviewer: @coderabbitai) — Updated skill summary to enumerate all 6 baseline rules: added "Fail Fast vs Graceful Handling" and "Documentation Priority" alongside the existing four. The rule table inside SKILL.md already lists six, so this corrects metadata drift.
  • plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/SKILL.md line 3 (reviewer: @coderabbitai) — Updated frontmatter description to enumerate all 6 baseline rules. Same factual fix as above, applied at the skill-registration level so trigger metadata stays accurate.
  • plugins/skill-set/skills/applying-coding-baseline/SKILL.md line 64 (reviewer: @coderabbitai) — Added text language identifier to the unlabeled fenced code block in the "Present plan" example. Silences markdownlint MD040.

Applied after discussion (0)

None.

Skipped (0)

None.

Statistics

Metric Count
Total reviewed 3
Auto-applied (OBVIOUS) 3
Discussed & applied (AMBIGUOUS) 0
Skipped 0

Commit: da9887fdocs(applying-coding-baseline): address CodeRabbit feedback on PR #22

@coderabbitai

coderabbitai Bot commented May 6, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown

Tip

For best results, initiate chat on the files or code changes.

@ether-moon Great work addressing all three comments! The fixes look well-categorized:

  • AGENTS.md line 18 — Metadata drift corrected by enumerating all 6 rules in the skill summary.
  • SKILL.md line 3 — Frontmatter description now accurately reflects the full rule set.
  • SKILL.md line 64text language identifier added to the fenced code block, resolving MD040.

Resolving all open review comments now.

[resolve]

@ether-moon
ether-moon merged commit f8dcc0e into main May 6, 2026
1 check passed
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

1 participant