Check reference / Verifiability & Maintainability
VERIFY-03 Version, changelog, or readme present
Deterministic — runs on every scan, no LLM or network needed.
Why it matters
Skills get copied into other people's setups and then silently drift from upstream. With no `version` field, no CHANGELOG, and no README, a consumer holding last month's copy has no way to tell what changed, whether they're affected, or even which revision they have — every update becomes a diff-the-whole-file archaeology exercise.
How to fix it
Add any one of the three (all is better): a `version:` field in the frontmatter, a CHANGELOG.md listing what changed per version, or a README.md stating what the skill does and its current state. One line of `version: 1.2.0` is the cheapest fix. This check is informational and never lowers the grade — a per-skill scan can't see repo-root hygiene, so absence in the skill's own directory proves nothing.
Example
---
name: sql-formatter
version: 1.2.0
---