Reviews and refactors an existing skill against quality standards. Use when asked to review, audit, improve, or refactor a skill. Triggers on phrases like "refactor this skill", "review my skill", "improve skill quality", "audit skill-name", "clean up my skill". Do NOT use to create a new skill from scratch.
Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.
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---
name: skill-refactor
description: Reviews and refactors an existing skill against quality standards. Use when asked to review, audit, improve, or refactor a skill. Triggers on phrases like "refactor this skill", "review my skill", "improve skill quality", "audit skill-name", "clean up my skill". Do NOT use to create a new skill from scratch.
---
# Skill Refactor
Standalone refactor review for existing skills. Runs critique and red-team agents in parallel, compiles a review summary, and gates all changes behind explicit user approval.
## Input
Accept one of:
- Project-bound path: `.claude/skills/<skill-name>/`
- Template path: `skills/<skill-name>/` (or any other project-relative path)
If the user does not provide a path, ask which skill to refactor before proceeding.
Confirm the directory exists and contains `SKILL.md` before launching sub-agents.
## Workflow
See `references/refactor-protocol.md` for full sub-agent prompt templates, output formats, and AskUserQuestion schemas.
### 1. Locate skill
Resolve the skill path. Read all files in the directory. If `SKILL.md` is missing, stop and report.
### 2. Launch parallel sub-agents
Launch both simultaneously:
- **Critique agent** — evaluates against internal quality standards (conciseness, degrees of freedom, progressive disclosure, structure, forbidden files). Read `references/refactor-protocol.md` for the prompt template.
- **Red-team agent** — evaluates against `references/anthropic-best-practices.md` (naming, frontmatter, trigger quality, instruction quality, error handling, file conventions). Read `references/refactor-protocol.md` for the prompt template.
Write outputs to:
- `temp/<skill-name>/critique/feedback.md`
- `temp/<skill-name>/red-team/feedback.md`
### 3. Compile review summary
Merge both feedback files into `temp/<skill-name>/refactor/review-summary.md`. Present the path to the user and ask them to review it before proceeding.
### 4. Approval gate
Use AskUserQuestion. Options: proceed with refactor, keep as-is, defer. If declined or deferred, log to `decisions.md` and stop.
### 5. Requirements gathering
Use AskUserQuestion (up to 3 questions): which change categories to apply, any new requirements, refactor depth (targeted vs full rewrite). Log all answers to `temp/<skill-name>/refactor/decisions.md`.
### 6. Refactor agent
Apply approved changes in-place to the skill files. Preserve sections not flagged for change in targeted refactors. Log implementation notes to `decisions.md`. Read `references/refactor-protocol.md` for the prompt template.
## Constraints
- Never modify skill files without explicit user approval
- Write all intermediate artifacts to `temp/<skill-name>/` before any approval gate
- Log all user decisions and implementation choices to `decisions.md`