04 Shadow Areas

Shadow Areas

Analytically scans a written artifact for gaps the author has not addressed. Unlike iterative Q&A clarification, this skill reads the existing material and emits a structured report: each gap carries a category from a locked 7-category taxonomy, a 3-tier severity, and a direct-question probe the author can act on immediately.

Available actions

| # | Action | Role | Input | | --- | ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------- | | 01 | detect | Parse input, extract gaps, classify category and severity, emit probes | file path or inline text | | 02 | render-report | Render markdown grouped by category and sorted by severity, write report | gap list from detect | | 03 | diff | Load prior report, classify gaps as closed / still-open / newly-introduced | gap list from detect + prior report path |

Default flow

Router dispatches by context:

• No prior report present: 01-detect then 02-render-report
• Prior report present: 01-detect then 03-diff then 02-render-report

The 02-render-report action always runs last and writes -shadow-report.md next to the source.

Transversal rules

• Never modify the source artifact.
• Every emitted gap must have all three fields populated: category, severity, probe.
• Every probe must be a direct question ending with ?.
• Categories and severities must come from the locked sets in @references/locked-sets.json.
• When zero blockers and zero majors remain, stamp the report status: clean.
• On re-runs, the identity key for diffing is category + normalized snippet - not probe wording - so minor probe rephrasing does not create spurious "newly introduced" gaps.

References

• @references/categories.md: locked 7-category taxonomy with definition and example per category.
• @references/severity-rubric.md: blocker / major / minor decision rules and examples.
• @references/probe-style.md: direct-question form rules.
• @references/locked-sets.json: machine-readable sets reused by the validator.

Assets

• @assets/report-template.md: report skeleton with header, per-category sections, and status: clean block.

External data

• None.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: ai-driven-dev
• Source: ai-driven-dev/framework
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://www.ai-driven-dev.fr/

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.