| name | model-cards |
| description | Use when authoring or interpreting Mitchell-extended model cards in this plugin. Covers when each of the 10 sections applies, the citation discipline, the honesty rules (claim-level and card-level), and the tiered source strategy. Reference for the model-card-researcher agent and the /model-card command. |
Mitchell-Extended Model Cards
This plugin produces 10-section model cards: Mitchell et al.'s 9 canonical
sections plus an "Operational Details" 10th section for the consumer-evaluator
audience. This skill is the reference for what each section is for and how
to fill it honestly.
The ten sections
1. Model Details
What the model IS — name, provider, family, release date, parameter count
where disclosed. Tier 1 (provider docs) is primary; tier 2 (HuggingFace) is
secondary for open-source / fine-tuned models.
2. Intended Use
What the model is for — primary uses, intended users, explicitly out-of-scope
uses. The provider's documentation usually makes this explicit; quote it
faithfully and cite.
3. Factors
Subgroups, environmental factors, instrumentation. Often sparse for
proprietary API-served models — write "Not publicly available" rather than
fabricate.
4. Metrics
Performance measures the provider reports. Distinguish provider-reported
benchmarks from independent evaluations (tier 1 vs tier 4).
5. Evaluation Data
Datasets used to evaluate. Frequently "Not publicly available" for
proprietary models. Tier 3 (release paper) is the most likely source.
6. Training Data
Datasets used to train. Almost always "Not publicly available" for proprietary
models — say so. Tier 3 is the only source likely to disclose.
7. Quantitative Analyses
Disaggregated performance — by demographic, by task category, by language.
Tier 3 (release paper) is primary.
8. Ethical Considerations
Risks, mitigations, known failure modes. Tier 3 is the most honest source
(release papers are usually more frank than marketing pages); tier 1 is
secondary; tier 4 (independent evaluations) is tertiary but valuable for
reality-check.
9. Caveats and Recommendations
The "what this card cannot tell you" section. Lists which sections came up
"Not publicly available" and why. Records conflicts between tiers.
Recommendations for use given the model's documented profile.
10. Operational Details
This plugin's extension. Best-effort structured fields:
- Pricing (input/output per million tokens)
- Context window
- Knowledge cutoff
- Supported APIs/SDKs
- Latency tier
- Tool / structured-output support
- Function calling
- Fine-tuning availability
- Rate-limit notes
Each field gets "Not publicly available" if absent; the field is never
omitted. This makes downstream comparison (/model-card compare) reliable.
Citation discipline
Every factual claim ends with [T<n>.<m>] where:
n is the source tier: 1 = provider docs, 2 = HuggingFace, 3 = arXiv,
4 = web searchm is the source index within that tier (1, 2, 3...)
Example:
Knowledge cutoff: January 2026 [T1.1]. Context window: 1M tokens [T1.2].
Pricing: $5/$25 per million tokens (input/output) at standard tier [T1.3].
URLs for each citation resolve via the per-card frontmatter sources block.
Honesty rules
Claim-level
- "Not publicly available" is the canonical answer when tier-1 is silent
and lower tiers cannot confirm. Never fabricate.
- "Per the provider's published statements" framing is preferred over
assertion — preserves the source-trust chain.
- If a tier-4 web claim conflicts with a tier-1 provider claim, tier-1 wins;
the conflict is flagged in Section 9 (Caveats).
Card-level
- If tier-1 (provider docs) AND tier-2 (HuggingFace) are both silent on the
model's existence — the agent cannot confirm the model exists at all — the
agent refuses to create the card and surfaces the result to the dispatching
command. The command reports back to the user. Cards are not produced
for non-existent or unconfirmed model names. This rule prevents
authoritative-looking cards for hallucinated models.
Tiered source strategy
| Tier | Source | Used for |
|---|
| 1 | Provider docs | Model Details, Intended Use, Operational Details |
| 2 | HuggingFace | Open-source / fine-tuned models; fallback for tier-1 gaps |
| 3 | arXiv release paper | Factors, Metrics, Evaluation Data, Training Data, Quantitative Analyses, Ethical Considerations |
| 4 | Web search | Anything tiers 1-3 don't cover; independent evaluations |
The agent researches section-by-section using each section's primary
tier (see the table in agents/model-card-researcher.agent.md). This is
more efficient than fetching all sources upfront.
When to use this skill
- Authoring a card by hand (without the agent)
- Interpreting a card (which sections to trust most)
- Designing extensions to the card schema (e.g. adding fields to Section 10)
- Building tooling that consumes cards (e.g. the future
/model-card compare)
