🏛️ TidyFactor Skill Architect v2.1.0

The Canonical Governance Engine & Architecture Specification for AI Coding Agent Skills.
Enforces the 12 Structural Rules of TidyFactor Skills across Google Antigravity, Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Codex, and Windsurf.

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📖 Table of Contents

• Overview & Philosophy
• The Architecture: Progressive Disclosure
• The 12 Structural Rules of TidyFactor Skills
• Commands & Operational Workflows
• The Contextual Decision Layer (CDL)
• Tooling & Integrity Validation Suite
• Cross-Agent Distribution & Synchronization
• Installation & Usage
• License & Credits

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🌟 Overview & Philosophy

tidyfactor-skill-architect is the foundational governance layer that establishes standard operating procedures for creating, auditing, expanding, and packaging AI Coding Agent Skills.

The Problem It Solves

Traditional AI skills often suffer from:

1. Context Window Pollution: Massive, monolithic markdown files that dump thousands of tokens on startup.
2. Execution Hallucinations: Prompt ambiguity where the agent attempts to "guess" rather than follow deterministic paths.
3. Multi-Agent Drift: Divergent behaviors across different AI coding environments (Antigravity vs. Claude Code vs. Cursor).
4. Syntax & Frontmatter Failures: Unquoted strings or malformed YAML breaking IDE autocomplete and discovery indexing.

The TidyFactor Solution

A skill must behave as a high-speed deterministic router, loading only the minimal necessary context at the exact moment it is required.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                 Session Discovery Layer                     │
│        SKILL.md Frontmatter (name + description)            │
└──────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┘
                               │ (Trigger Matched)
                               ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                 Dispatcher Layer (Router)                   │
│          SKILL.md (~350 tokens, Anti-triggers, Scope)       │
└──────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┘
                               │ (Intent Identified)
                               ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                 Command Layer (Router Link)                 │
│              references/commands/<command>.md               │
└──────────────┬───────────────────────────────┬──────────────┘
               │ (Loads Workflow)              │ (Injects Memory)
               ▼                               ▼
┌──────────────────────────────┐ ┌────────────────────────────┐
│        Workflow Layer        │ │        Memory Layer        │
│   Ordered Execution Steps    │ │ Pure Technical Constraints │
│    + Validation Checklist    │ │  Schemas, Patterns, Tables │
└──────────────────────────────┘ └────────────────────────────┘

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📐 The 12 Structural Rules

Every skill created, audited, or packaged within the TidyFactor ecosystem strictly adheres to the 12 Structural Rules:

#	Rule	Core Mandate	Failure Mode Prevented
1	Dispatcher Discipline	SKILL.md is strictly a router (~350 tokens). Zero in-line instructions.	Token bloat & memory exhaustion at session boot.
2	One Workflow = One Outcome	1 workflow produces exactly 1 tangible deliverable with a ## Validation checklist.	Ambiguous multi-tasking and incomplete executions.
3	Operational Memory	Pure technical facts, schemas, and schemas. Zero marketing narrative.	AI hallucinating promotional text into production code.
4	No Empty Structures	Clean, flat file hierarchies. No single-file folders (memory.md vs memory/).	Deep directory nesting and navigation overhead.
5	Philosophy Isolation	Brand philosophy and rationale live solely in memory/philosophy.md (unreferenced).	Agents outputting promotional fluff instead of code.
6	Trigger-Justified Growth	Files are added strictly upon verifiable triggers (Size, Branch, Variant, CDL).	Premature folder explosion and architecture sprawl.
7	Quality Bar & Native Tooling	Deterministic operations encapsulated in tools/ wrapping native tools (node, python).	Unreliable LLM regex replacements & flaky bash scripts.
8	Cross-Platform Parity & SemVer SSOT	100% behavioral parity across all agent platforms; atomic metadata sync.	Agent version drift and silent breaking changes.
9	Platform Compatibility & YAML Invariants	Valid YAML parsing (yaml.safe_load()), description ≤ 1024 chars, mandatory double quotes "...".	Silent failure in IDE slash (/) command autocomplete.
10	Tool Permission Declaration	Explicit declaration of tool languages, mutation abilities, and network scope in SKILL.md.	Security blind spots and unprompted file overwrites.
11	Memory Freshness	Required <!-- last-verified: YYYY-MM-DD --> marker with $\le 180$ days freshness gate.	Stale API references, deprecated flags, and broken specs.
12	Skill vs MCP Boundary	Static decision logic lives in skills; dynamic APIs & databases delegate to MCP.	Skill bloat and duplicated live-data implementations.

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⚡ Commands & Operational Workflows

tidyfactor-skill-architect exposes 4 core operational commands:

1. init — Scaffold a New Skill

• Trigger: "Build me a skill for X" / "Turn this workflow into a TidyFactor skill"
• Loads: references/workflows/create-skill.md + references/memory/spec.md + references/memory/growth-rule.md + assets/skill-md-skeleton.md
• Output: Fully scaffolded, compliant skill directory with valid YAML frontmatter, dispatcher SKILL.md, and initial workflow.

2. audit — Audit & Score an Existing Skill

• Trigger: "Audit this skill" / "Check if this skill follows TidyFactor rules"
• Loads: references/workflows/audit-skill.md + references/memory/spec.md
• Output: 12-rule compliance scorecard (Score: X/12), list of violations, and exact automated file-level remediations.

3. test — Generate Test Scenarios

• Trigger: "Test this skill" / "Generate test scenarios"
• Loads: references/workflows/test-skill.md + references/memory/spec.md
• Output: Populates tests/scenarios.md with $\ge 3$ distinct evaluation prompts (happy-path, edge-case, anti-trigger rejection).

4. grow — Evaluate Architecture Growth

• Trigger: "Should I add a new file/folder to this skill?"
• Loads: references/memory/growth-rule.md
• Output: Deterministic decision (SPLIT, EXPAND, or REJECT) based on quantitative line count and lifecycle triggers.

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🧠 The Contextual Decision Layer (CDL)

For complex skills where execution depends on interdependent architectural choices (e.g. tidyfactor-styler, tidyfactor-next), the Skill Architect codifies the CDL Pattern:

1. Thin Arbitration Protocol (memory/decision-points.md): Defines triggers, boolean skip conditions, and pointers to existing SSOT catalogs.
2. Pre-flight Brief & Cache (brief command / .tidyfactor/<skill>-brief.md): Gathers decisions once per project, saving them to disk so downstream commands execute silently without asking repetitive questions.
3. Single-Round Batching & Safe Defaults: Unresolved ambiguities are batched into 1 single round (max 3 questions). Any overflow defaults to safe conventions.
4. Decision Alignment Axis: Evaluates generated code against Axis 7 (D - Decision Alignment) during pre-emit self-critique.

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🛠️ Tooling & Integrity Validation Suite

The skill includes a dedicated deterministic verification engine:

# Run the 11-point automated integrity validator
python tools/validate_skill.py

Automated Validation Matrix

• [1] SemVer Synchronization: Verifies package.json, .tidyfactor, brand.json, and CHANGELOG.md share identical versions.
• [2] License Consistency: Ensures standard Apache-2.0 license file exists.
• [3] Referenced File Integrity: Checks that all paths referenced in SKILL.md exist on disk.
• [4] Validation Checklists: Confirms every workflow file contains a ## Validation checklist.
• [5] Leak Prevention: Audits for leaked local machine absolute paths.
• [6] Token Budget Gate: Asserts dispatcher SKILL.md is within ~350 token budget (max 500).
• [7] Memory Freshness Gate: Enforces <!-- last-verified: YYYY-MM-DD --> marker within $\le 180$ days.
• [8] Strict YAML Frontmatter Validation: Executes yaml.safe_load() to ensure frontmatter is syntactically valid and description is properly quoted and $\le 1024$ chars.
• [9] Tooling Scope Declaration: Verifies Rule 10 declaration when tools/ exist.
• [10] Test Scenario Suite: Asserts tests/scenarios.md contains $\ge 3$ test cases.
• [11] MCP Boundary: Checks that skills interacting with MCP document boundary logic.

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🔄 Cross-Agent Distribution & Synchronization

When packaging or releasing with node tools/build-skill.js, the builder automatically compiles the distribution archive and synchronizes across all 5 target environments:

Skills-LAB/tidyfactor-skill-architect/ (SSOT)
  ├── 📦 dist/tidyfactor-skill-architect.skill
  ├── 📦 dist/tidyfactor-skill-architect-vX.Y.Z.skill
  ├── 🔁 .agents/skills/tidyfactor-skill-architect/ (Local Agent Wrapper)
  ├── 🔁 ~/.gemini/config/skills/tidyfactor-skill-architect/ (Global Gemini/Antigravity)
  └── 🔁 /mnt/skills/user/tidyfactor-skill-architect/ (Claude / Unix Environment)

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📦 Installation & Usage

1. Via NPM / NPX

# Add directly to your active agent workspace
npx @tidyfactor/cli-skill-architect

# Or install globally
npm install -g @tidyfactor/skill-architect

2. Manual Agent Registration

Clone or copy into your agent's skill root:

# Google Antigravity & Gemini IDE
cp -r tidyfactor-skill-architect ~/.gemini/config/skills/

# Local Project Agent Wrapper
cp -r tidyfactor-skill-architect .agents/skills/

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📄 License & Credits

• License: Apache-2.0
• Engineered by: TidyFactor Ecosystem & Alwkala Digital Agency
• Contact: hello@tidyfactor.com | +201016656899