Assess

Comprehensive assessment skill for answering “is this good?” with structured evaluation, scoring, and actionable recommendations.

Quick Start

/assess backend/app/services/auth.py
/assess our caching strategy
/assess the current database schema
/assess frontend/src/components/Dashboard

STEP 0: Verify User Intent with AskUserQuestion

BEFORE creating tasks, clarify assessment dimensions:

AskUserQuestion(
  questions=[{
    "question": "What dimensions to assess?",
    "header": "Dimensions",
    "options": [
      {"label": "Full assessment (Recommended)", "description": "All dimensions: quality, maintainability, security, performance"},
      {"label": "Code quality only", "description": "Readability, complexity, best practices"},
      {"label": "Security focus", "description": "Vulnerabilities, attack surface, compliance"},
      {"label": "Quick score", "description": "Just give me a 0-10 score with brief notes"}
    ],
    "multiSelect": false
  }]
)

Based on answer, adjust workflow:

• Full assessment: All 7 phases, parallel agents
• Code quality only: Skip security and performance phases
• Security focus: Prioritize security-auditor agent
• Quick score: Single pass, brief output

STEP 0b: Select Orchestration Mode

Choose Agent Teams (mesh — assessors cross-validate scores) or Task tool (star — all report to lead):

1. ORCHESTKIT_PREFER_TEAMS=1 → Agent Teams mode
2. Agent Teams unavailable → Task tool mode (default)
3. Otherwise: Full assessment with 6 dimension agents → recommend Agent Teams; Quick score or single-dimension → Task tool

Fallback: If Agent Teams encounters issues, fall back to Task tool for remaining assessment.

Task Management (CC 2.1.16)

# Create main assessment task
TaskCreate(
  subject="Assess: {target}",
  description="Comprehensive evaluation with quality scores and recommendations",
  activeForm="Assessing {target}"
)

# Create subtasks for 7-phase process
for phase in ["Understand target", "Rate quality", "List pros/cons",
              "Compare alternatives", "Generate suggestions",
              "Estimate effort", "Compile report"]:
    TaskCreate(subject=phase, activeForm=f"{phase}ing")

What This Skill Answers

Workflow Overview

Phase 1: Target Understanding

Identify what’s being assessed (code, design, approach, decision, pattern) and gather context:

# PARALLEL - Gather context
Read(file_path="$ARGUMENTS")  # If file path
Grep(pattern="$ARGUMENTS", output_mode="files_with_matches")
mcp__memory__search_nodes(query="$ARGUMENTS")  # Past decisions

Phase 2: Quality Rating (6 Dimensions)

Rate each dimension 0-10 with weighted composite score. See Scoring Rubric for details.

Composite Score: Weighted average of all dimensions.

Launch 6 parallel agents (one per dimension) with run_in_background=True.

Phase 2 — Agent Teams Alternative

In Agent Teams mode, form an assessment team where dimension assessors cross-validate scores and discuss disagreements:

TeamCreate(team_name="assess-{target-slug}", description="Assess {target}")

Task(subagent_type="code-quality-reviewer", name="correctness-assessor",
     team_name="assess-{target-slug}",
     prompt="""Assess CORRECTNESS (0-10) and MAINTAINABILITY (0-10) for: {target}
     When you find issues that affect security, message security-assessor.
     When you find issues that affect performance, message perf-assessor.
     Share your scores with all teammates for calibration — if scores diverge
     significantly (>2 points), discuss the disagreement.""")

Task(subagent_type="security-auditor", name="security-assessor",
     team_name="assess-{target-slug}",
     prompt="""Assess SECURITY (0-10) for: {target}
     When correctness-assessor flags security-relevant patterns, investigate deeper.
     When you find performance-impacting security measures, message perf-assessor.
     Share your score and flag any cross-dimension trade-offs.""")

Task(subagent_type="performance-engineer", name="perf-assessor",
     team_name="assess-{target-slug}",
     prompt="""Assess PERFORMANCE (0-10) and SCALABILITY (0-10) for: {target}
     When security-assessor flags performance trade-offs, evaluate the impact.
     When you find testability issues (hard-to-benchmark code), message test-assessor.
     Share your scores with reasoning for the composite calculation.""")

Task(subagent_type="test-generator", name="test-assessor",
     team_name="assess-{target-slug}",
     prompt="""Assess TESTABILITY (0-10) for: {target}
     Evaluate test coverage, test quality, and ease of testing.
     When other assessors flag dimension-specific concerns, verify test coverage
     for those areas. Share your score and any coverage gaps found.""")

Team teardown after report compilation:

SendMessage(type="shutdown_request", recipient="correctness-assessor", content="Assessment complete")
SendMessage(type="shutdown_request", recipient="security-assessor", content="Assessment complete")
SendMessage(type="shutdown_request", recipient="perf-assessor", content="Assessment complete")
SendMessage(type="shutdown_request", recipient="test-assessor", content="Assessment complete")
TeamDelete()

Fallback: If team formation fails, use standard Phase 2 Task spawns above.

Phase 3: Pros/Cons Analysis

## Pros (Strengths)
| # | Strength | Impact | Evidence |
|---|----------|--------|----------|
| 1 | [strength] | High/Med/Low | [example] |

## Cons (Weaknesses)
| # | Weakness | Severity | Evidence |
|---|----------|----------|----------|
| 1 | [weakness] | High/Med/Low | [example] |

**Net Assessment:** [Strengths outweigh / Balanced / Weaknesses dominate]
**Recommended action:** [Keep as-is / Improve / Reconsider / Rewrite]

Phase 4: Alternative Comparison

See Alternative Analysis for full comparison template.

Phase 5: Improvement Suggestions

See Improvement Prioritization for effort/impact guidelines.

Quick Wins = Effort <= 2 AND Impact >= 4. Always highlight these first.

Phase 6: Effort Estimation

Phase 7: Assessment Report

See Scoring Rubric for full report template.

# Assessment Report: $ARGUMENTS

**Overall Score: [N.N]/10** (Grade: [A+/A/B/C/D/F])

**Verdict:** [EXCELLENT | GOOD | ADEQUATE | NEEDS WORK | CRITICAL]

## Answer: Is This Good?
**[YES / MOSTLY / SOMEWHAT / NO]**
[Reasoning]

Grade Interpretation

Key Decisions

Related Skills

• assess-complexity – Task complexity assessment
• verify – Post-implementation verification
• code-review-playbook – Code review patterns
• quality-gates – Quality gate patterns

Version: 1.0.0 (January 2026)