Evaluates the quality of the user's prompts to Claude. Auto-triggers when the user appears to be prompting poorly — vague questions, shotgun debugging, desperation signals like rapid rephrasing, 'why isn't this working', 'I've tried everything', 'please just do X', or questions that lack specificity about what they're actually looking for. Also triggers on direct requests like 'check my prompt', 'am I asking this right', 'how should I prompt this'.
Evaluates prompt quality, diagnoses problems, suggests rewrites, and coaches toward better prompting habits.
Evaluate the user's prompt and assign a desperation level 1-10:
| Level | Signal | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1-3 | Clear, specific, well-scoped | You're in control — minor suggestions at most |
| 4-6 | Somewhat vague, missing context, could be interpreted multiple ways | You're drifting — let's sharpen this |
| 7-9 | Throwing things at the wall, rapid rephrasing, "just make it work" energy | You're at the mercy of the LLM — stop and regroup |
| 10 | Copy-pasting error messages with no context, "please help" | Full desperation — we need to back up significantly |
Present the rating with a brief explanation of what signals were detected.
At this level the skill should be near-invisible. Do not interrupt the user's flow with a full analysis. A one-liner like "Good prompt — clear and specific" followed by actually answering the question is the right weight. The full phase breakdown (diagnosis, rewrite, coaching) only activates at level 4+.
Only activates at desperation level 4+. Identify what's specifically wrong with the prompt:
Each issue is stated concretely, tied to the actual prompt. No generic advice.
Only activates at desperation level 4+. Offer a rewritten version of the prompt that would get better results.
Show before and after so the user sees what changed and why. Format:
Your prompt: [original]
Sharper version: [rewrite]
What changed: [1-2 sentences explaining the improvement]
This teaches better prompting. Do not answer the user's original question — just improve how they asked it.
High desperation (7+):
learning-toolkit:learnModerate desperation (4-6):
Low desperation (1-3):