The Shape of a Skill Name
Names are the cheapest signal in a directory and the easiest to over-read. Here is what 591 evaluated skills actually name themselves.
Across the 591 fully-evaluated skills:
| Name pattern | Count |
|---|---|
| Single word (no hyphen) | 37 |
Ends in -builder | 16 |
Ends in -expert | 14 |
Ends in -pro | 10 |
Ends in -api | 9 |
Ends in -skills | 4 |
Ends in -skill | 3 |
Ends in -generator | 3 |
Ends in -analyzer | 3 |
Ends in -checker | 3 |
Ends in -cli | 2 |
Ends in -master | 2 |
Median name length: 17 characters.
What the suffixes say
The suffixes are not randomly distributed. -api clusters in finance and data (exchange integrations, data providers). -builder clusters in marketing and design (artifact generators). -expert and -pro are general-purpose labels applied across categories.
That is coherent: a suffix is a compressed claim about what kind of thing the skill is. Providing data wants a different word than producing an artifact.
The suffixes that don't help
-expert and -pro are the two most common quality-claiming suffixes, and they do not predict score. There is no meaningful difference between skills carrying them and the rest of the directory.
That is the expected result. A name is chosen by an author before the work is evaluated, and "pro" is a claim, not a measurement.
The more interesting pattern is the single-word names — 37 of them, including the highest-scoring skill in the directory (xlsx, 9.8). Single-word names tend to belong to skills that do one obvious thing: a file format, a platform, a well-known protocol. The name is a noun because the skill is a noun.
Why names matter more than they should
In a directory, the name is doing routing work. The agent reads the description, but the human scanning a list reads the name first. A name that describes the object (xlsx, docx, pptx) is instantly legible. A name that describes the aspiration (-pro, -expert, -master) is not.
That asymmetry is why the single-word skills cluster near the top of the score distribution: their authors had a clear enough idea of the skill to give it the thing's name rather than a marketing suffix.
The practical rule
Name the object, not the quality:
- Legible:
xlsx,baoyu-diagram,code-review - Aspirational:
design-expert-pro,marketing-master
The second kind tells a reader that the author wanted to be seen as expert. The first tells them what the skill does.
The trigger quality dimension scores the description, not the name — but the name is the first line of the description's job.