csv-excel-merger

I took a look at your csv-excel-merger skill and wanted to share some thoughts.

Links:

• GitHub
• Your agentic skill in the SkillzWave marketplace

TL;DR

You're at 68/100, which lands you in D territory. This is based on Anthropic's skill best practices rubric. Your strongest area is Spec Compliance (12/15) – the frontmatter is clean and properly formatted. The real drag is Progressive Disclosure Architecture (14/30) and Writing Style (5/10). The good news? Both are fixable.

What's Working Well

• Clean frontmatter and naming – Your YAML is valid and the hyphenated skill name follows conventions perfectly
• Clear triggers – "merge CSV," "combine Excel," "deduplicate" are specific and discoverable
• Practical scope – You're solving a real problem that people actually need; the flexibility with conflict resolution and export formats is solid
• Code examples included – You show actual Python code, which helps people understand what you're doing

The Big One: Bloated Structure

Your skill is 250+ lines crammed into a single SKILL.md file, and about 80 of those lines are a decorative ASCII output template that gets embedded inline. This is your biggest token waste.

Why it matters: Every time Claude uses this skill, it loads that entire template into context. That's unnecessary overhead. Progressive Disclosure Architecture exists specifically to solve this – you layer content so Claude only pulls in what it needs.

The fix: Create a references/ directory:

• Move the 80-line output template to references/output_template.md
• Extract your merge strategies guide to references/merge_strategies.md
• Reference these files with simple pointers like: "See references/output_template.md for format details"

This alone should net you +5-6 points by reducing your core skill size and enabling proper layering.

Other Things Worth Fixing

1. Missing table of contents – At 250+ lines, you need a TOC at the top. Add a simple navigation section pointing to Instructions, Example Triggers, Best Practices. (+2 points)

2. Second-person voice in instructions – Your step 1 asks "Are the files provided?" Switch to imperative: "Determine file count. Check if files are provided or require disk read." (+1-2 points)

3. Redundant sections – Your "Best Practices" and "Output Quality" sections overlap significantly on data quality and reporting. Merge them into one "Guidelines" section. (+2 points)

4. No verification steps – Your code example shows merging but doesn't validate the result. Add assertions like assert len(merged) > 0 and row count verification. (+2 points)

Quick Wins (In Order)

1. Extract the output template and merge strategies to references/ – biggest bang for your buck
2. Add a table of contents to improve navigation
3. Tighten voice to imperative mood throughout
4. Consolidate overlapping Best Practices sections
5. Add verification/validation code to your examples

Hit these five and you're looking at 72-75 points without major restructuring.

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