| name | arn-assessing |
| description | This skill should be used when the user says "assessing", "arness assessing", "assess", "assess codebase", "technical review", "codebase assessment", "find improvements", "what should I improve", "tech debt review", "pattern compliance check", "codebase health check", "improvement plan", "review my codebase", "what needs fixing", "code quality check", "audit my code", "run an assessment", "arn-assessing", or wants a comprehensive technical assessment of the codebase against stored patterns followed by prioritized improvement execution. Chains to arn-implementing if improvements are identified. |
| version | 1.0.0 |
Arness Assessing
Comprehensive technical assessment of the codebase against stored patterns, followed by prioritized improvement identification. This is a first-citizen entry point that wraps arn-code-assess with a pre-flight check and provides chaining context to arn-implementing.
This skill is a medium orchestration wrapper. It MUST NOT duplicate arn-code-assess logic. All assessment work is done by the invoked skill (which has its own 7 internal gates). Arness-assessing handles: prerequisite checks, pre-flight validation, invoking the assess skill, and offering the chain exit.
Step 0: Ensure Configuration
Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/arn-code-ensure-config/references/step-0-fast-path.md and follow its instructions. This guarantees a user profile exists and ## Arness is configured with Arness Code fields before proceeding.
After Step 0 completes, extract the following from ## Arness:
- Code patterns — path to the directory containing stored pattern documentation
Workflow
Step 1: Pre-flight Check
Verify that pattern documentation exists at the configured Code patterns path:
<code-patterns-dir>/code-patterns.md<code-patterns-dir>/testing-patterns.md<code-patterns-dir>/architecture.md
If any are missing: inform the user: "Pattern documentation is incomplete. The assessment needs stored patterns to compare against. Run /arn-planning first — it will generate pattern docs on first use." Do not proceed.
If all exist: inform the user briefly: "Pattern documentation found. Starting assessment..."
Step 2: Invoke Assess
Show progress:
Assessing: PRE-FLIGHT -> ASSESSMENT (scope -> analyze -> prioritize -> spec -> plan -> execute -> ship -> update-patterns)
^^^^^^^^^^
Invoke the assess skill:
Skill: arn-code:arn-code-assess
The assess skill has its own 7 internal decision gates (scope selection, improvement selection, spec review, execution mode, etc.) and manages its own complete pipeline internally. Wait for it to complete.
Step 3: Completion Handoff
After arn-code-assess completes, offer the chain exit:
Ask (using AskUserQuestion):
"Assessment complete. What next?"
Options:
- Implement improvements — Start implementing the identified fixes and improvements
- Done — Exit
If Implement improvements: Skill: arn-code:arn-implementing
If Done: Exit.
Error Handling
## Arness config missing: Handled by Step 0 (ensure-config) — this should not occur if Step 0 completed successfully.- Pattern docs missing: Block with pre-flight message. Suggest running
/arn-planning which will generate pattern docs on first use.
arn-code-assess fails: Present the error. Ask: retry or abort.- Assessment finds no improvements: Exit with "Codebase is healthy — no improvements needed." Do not offer implementing chain.
