Python validator derived from READ, WRITE, DO, and Entry. Enforces
frontmatter shape, required sections, knowledge-file length and
no-code-blocks rule, sample-sibling naming (<slug>.good.al /
<slug>.bad.al), action-skill section ordering, and unique skill ids
per kind. Runs in GitHub Actions on PRs and pushes to main; emits
GitHub annotations when GITHUB_ACTIONS is set, plain text otherwise.
Warnings do not fail the build.
Passes cleanly against the existing microsoft-layer corpus.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Add a new skill kind, 'entry-point', and its sole instance at
skills/entry.md. When an orchestrator points an agent at BCQuality,
the agent's first call is Entry: it receives a task context and
returns a dispatch record naming the action skill(s) to invoke.
Routing logic lives in Entry, not in the orchestrator.
Entry structurally follows DO's Source -> Relevance -> Worklist ->
Action pattern but the units it selects are action skills (not
knowledge files) and its output is a dispatch record (not a
findings-report).
Contract highlights:
- Inputs semantics in DO clarified as any-of: orchestrator supplies
whichever listed input types it has; skill must return
'not-applicable' if the subset is insufficient. This matches
the existing al-* canonical skills which declare
[pr-diff, file-path] as alternatives.
- Relevance admits candidates whose inputs intersect
inputs-available, not whose inputs are a subset.
- Dispatched inputs are the intersection, not the full
inputs-available set, to avoid leakage between skills.
- Super-skill precedence in Worklist supersedes a sub-skill only
when the goal is a broader match for the super than the sub.
When the goal specifically names a concern the sub handles
(e.g., 'performance review'), the sub wins and the super is
dropped with reason 'narrower-sub-skill-selected'.
- Skill layer precedence is defined here as custom > community >
microsoft, matching READ's rule for knowledge files.
- skipped[] carries 'superseded-by' for layer-precedence,
sub-skill, and super-skill drops, for traceability.
Propagate the concept through:
- skills/README.md: distinguish the runtime entry-point skill from
the three meta-skill contracts.
- skills/do.md: acknowledge entry-point alongside meta-skills as
the only kinds that live outside a layer.
- README.md: rewrite the Skills and Agent bootstrapping sections
so the bootstrap instruction is 'invoke /skills/entry.md first'.
- agent-consumption.md: update the Mermaid flow and step narrative
to show Entry dispatch, with READ and DO read on demand.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Anyone (human or agent) browsing to /skills/ on GitHub previously saw a
bare directory listing. This file names the three meta-skills, states
the reading order, and describes who each is for. Replaces the
placeholder .gitkeep.
No contract changes -- this is a navigation aid.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Sample code in knowledge articles is demonstration-only and never
imported into a BC app, so object-ID uniqueness or ranges are not a
property the READ contract needs to enforce. The Sample files section
now just says samples are self-contained and demonstration-only, with
no guidance about IDs.
Existing samples keep whatever IDs they happen to have; future authors
are free to use anything readable.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
The /samples/ top-level tree is replaced with sibling files in each
knowledge-layer folder. An article and its demonstrations now live
side-by-side:
microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.md
microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.good.al
microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.bad.al
Rationale:
- Proximity. An article and its paired samples are one unit; the
filesystem now reflects that.
- Layer ownership. Samples inherit layer precedence for free -- a
/custom/ fork can override an article and its samples atomically,
which the shared /samples/ tree previously made awkward.
- Trivial migration path. Action-skill source globs
(*/knowledge/<domain>/**/*.md) are unchanged; sample discovery is a
sibling-filename lookup.
Changes:
- git mv of all 65 sample files from samples/<domain>/<slug>/{bad,good}.al
to microsoft/knowledge/<domain>/<slug>.{bad,good}.al (history preserved).
- Update See-sample references in all 37 articles that ship samples.
- skills/read.md: replace the no-code-blocks bullet with a pointer to a
new Sample files section that fully specifies the sibling convention,
the kinds (good/bad + forward-compatible), multi-technology rules,
demonstration-only status, and layer-precedence behaviour.
- skills/write.md: update the samples pointer to match.
- README.md: annotate the knowledge tree with the sample sibling shape.
- samples/README.md deleted; content lifted into skills/read.md.
- Both generators (C:\temp\gen_performance_knowledge.py,
C:\temp\gen_security_knowledge.py) updated to emit at the new paths
and to stop writing samples/README.md. Re-running them is idempotent
against the committed layout.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Converts Jesper's existing AL security-review prompt into BCQuality seed
knowledge articles so the al-security-review leaf has a real corpus to
match against. Mirrors the performance seed phase.
Articles under microsoft/knowledge/security/ (16):
- Permission model: follow-least-privilege-in-permission-sets,
use-indirect-permissions-for-elevated-access,
use-inherent-permissions-to-grant-minimal-access
- Secrets: never-hardcode-secrets-in-al,
use-isolated-storage-for-module-and-company-secrets,
prefer-azure-key-vault-for-production-secrets,
use-secrettext-for-credentials, use-secrettext-with-httpclient,
compose-secrets-with-secretstrsubstno,
use-nondebuggable-when-parsing-secrets
- External calls: require-https-for-external-calls,
set-timeouts-for-external-calls, do-not-put-credentials-in-urls
- Error handling: avoid-sensitive-data-in-error-messages,
do-not-swallow-security-errors-silently
- Extensibility: do-not-expose-sensitive-data-in-event-publishers
Paired AL samples under samples/security/<slug>/{bad,good}.al, object
IDs 50200-50231 (no overlap with performance 50100-50140).
Rubber-duck findings addressed:
- HttpClient secret-URI: SetSecretRequestUri is on HttpRequestMessage
(not HttpClient). Rewrote use-secrettext-with-httpclient and its
good sample to use HttpRequestMessage + HttpClient.Send.
- InherentPermissions only grants access to same-extension objects;
the sample now defines its own table 50230 "Sec Sample Lookup" and
grants 'r' on that, not on Database::Customer.
- Reworked compose-secrets-with-secretstrsubstno bad.al away from
Format(SecretText) (unreliable) to a plain Text+StrSubstNo anti-
pattern.
- Moved normative guidance out of Description in three articles
(compose-secrets-..., prefer-azure-key-vault-..., use-inherent-...)
so it sits in Best Practice / Anti Pattern per READ contract.
- Added a companion helper codeunit (50231) to the indirect-permissions
good sample so it actually demonstrates the controlled write path.
- Rebuilt the event-publisher good/bad pair on the same ExportCustomer
scenario so the contrast is the shape of the event signature, not a
different event.
Also: broaden samples/README.md object-ID range note to 50100-50299.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Converts an existing performance-review prompt into 22 atomic
knowledge articles under microsoft/knowledge/performance/, each
paired with AL samples under samples/performance/<slug>/ demonstrating
the anti-pattern and/or the best practice. The full set seeds the
corpus the microsoft/skills/al-performance-review leaf skill matches
against and validates the READ knowledge-file format end-to-end.
Every article conforms to the READ contract: six required frontmatter
fields, Description always present, no fenced code blocks, sample
code referenced by repo-relative path. Each article is marked with a
blockquote 'Seed article' note so domain stewards can extend or
restructure them freely.
Articles (ordered by concern area):
Database query efficiency
- use-findset-with-next (AA0181)
- avoid-findfirst-with-next (AA0233)
- only-fetch-records-you-use (AA0175)
- use-findset-readonly-by-default
- use-setloadfields-for-partial-records
- use-addloadfields-in-report-layouts
- use-calcsums-to-aggregate-filtered-sets (file: use-calcsums-for-flowfield-totals.md)
- avoid-calcfields-in-loops
- add-sift-keys-for-flowfields (AA0232)
- use-isempty-for-existence-checks
Filter and key optimization
- filter-before-find
- set-current-key-to-match-filters
Temporary tables and transactions
- use-temporary-tables-for-intermediate-data
- keep-transaction-scope-short
- avoid-user-interaction-in-transactions
- avoid-commit-inside-loops
Record operations
- prefer-get-for-primary-key-lookups
- use-insert-false-when-skipping-triggers
- prefer-direct-record-over-recordref
Strings, codeunits, events
- use-strsubstno-for-message-formatting
- use-single-instance-codeunits-for-caching
- keep-event-subscribers-lightweight
samples/README.md documents the sample-folder convention and makes
clear the samples are demonstration-only, not derived from BC base
application source, with unique object IDs in the 50100-50199 range.
Rubber-duck pass caught: a misleading good.al in avoid-calcfields-in-loops
(fixed by switching to a hoistable CalcFields scenario), an invalid
event subscriber signature in keep-event-subscribers-lightweight
(fixed by adding var xRec), normative guidance leaked into the
Description of use-findset-readonly-by-default (moved to Anti Pattern),
a missing sample pair for keep-transaction-scope-short (added), and
muddy FlowField/CalcSums framing (retitled and clarified).
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
DO contract (skills/do.md)
- New 'sub-skills' optional frontmatter field on action skills: when
present and non-empty, the skill is a super-skill that composes
other action skills.
- New 'Composition (super-skills)' section covering section
interpretation, outcome rollup, summary aggregation, and suppression
scope.
- Output schema gains three optional fields: 'from-sub-skill' on each
finding, top-level 'sub-results[]' carrying nested findings-reports,
and top-level 'skipped-sub-skills[]'.
- Super-skills MUST NOT filter sub-skills by task content; leaves own
task-level applicability and signal via outcome.
- Findings from a failed sub-skill MUST NOT flow into the parent's
findings[] or counts, consistent with DO's rule that consumers
ignore a failed skill's findings. Reports are still preserved in
sub-results[] for traceability.
- Rolled-up non-citation finding ids MUST be prefixed with the sub-
skill id to prevent collisions across sub-skills. Citation-based
ids are already unique via repo path and are not rewritten.
- Outcome rollup rules updated: 'partial' covers S = {partial},
{partial, partial}, and {partial, failed}. Empty worklist rolls up
to 'not-applicable' with outcome-reason.
- Nested super-skills are not permitted in v1.
Reference skills (microsoft/skills/)
- al-code-review.md rewritten as the canonical super-skill: lists
al-performance-review and al-security-review as sub-skills, orch-
estrates invocation, aggregates output, and includes a worked
rolled-up JSON example plus the empty-corpus rollup.
- al-performance-review.md added as a leaf reference skill for the
performance knowledge domain.
- al-security-review.md added as a leaf reference skill for the
security knowledge domain.
- Both leaves retain the leaf-level rules validated in the prior
pass: partial-context message requirement, worklist-scoped
suppression, application-area semantics, and the platform-guarantee
threshold for blocker severity.
README updated to describe leaf vs super-skill and link all three
reference skills.
Two rubber-duck passes tightened the contract and caught schema
violations in the worked examples before commit.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
- microsoft/skills/al-code-review.md: full action skill reviewing AL
source changes. Exercises every part of the DO contract:
- frontmatter with all required action-skill fields and the four
optional knowledge filters
- all five required sections (Source, Relevance, Worklist, Action,
Output) in order
- applicability-based filtering with READ's partial-context rule,
including the requirement to name unknown dimensions in the
finding message
- conflict resolution and suppression scoped to worklist candidates
- full outcome taxonomy handled (completed, no-knowledge,
not-applicable, partial, failed), including the current empty-
corpus state
- worked JSON output example showing structured references,
per-finding confidence, and a suppression entry
- README.md: link the skill as the canonical reference so skill
authors have a starting point.
Two rubber-duck passes caught and fixed contract precision issues
before commit: location.line/range consistency, partial-context
message requirement, over-broad suppression scope, application-area
matching semantics, and the blocker severity threshold.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
- skills/read.md (READ, Schema + Use) — knowledge-file contract:
frontmatter schema, required/optional sections (normative vs
non-normative), layer precedence with applicability-based conflict
detection, explicit frontmatter matching semantics (including
partial-context handling).
- skills/do.md (DO, Action Skill) — action-skill template:
frontmatter schema, required sections, four-step pattern
(Source -> Relevance -> Worklist -> Action), and the output contract
as a JSON schema with outcome, findings, structured references,
confidence, and mandatory suppression recording. Includes a worked
example.
- skills/write.md (WRITE, New Knowledge) — authoring guide:
atomicity, size, section guidance, field-by-field choices, file
naming, layer choice, pre-PR checklist. Defers to READ for the
format spec.
- README.md — link the three files from the meta-skills section and
update the output-contract paragraph to include outcome and
suppressed.
- agent-consumption.md — update step 5 (Agent emits structured output)
to match the richer DO contract.
Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
