What it does
apply-coding-standards checks the code being written or changed against your distilled coding standards and fixes what the rules require, citing doc#rule with every change. It never checks everything against everything: two-level routing — entry file → per-folder map → topic doc — means it loads only the standards the change actually touches.
The skill’s own directory doubles as the global home for your generic standards: distill-coding-standards writes them into the skill’s standards/ folder, so they travel with the skill across every repo on your machine. The shipped skill starts with that folder empty — you fill it with your own distillation, not mine.
When to reach for it
- Invocation mode. Type
/apply-coding-standards, or the agent reaches for it automatically while writing code in a repo with aCODING_STANDARDS/directory. - Trigger boundary. Reach for it to check specific files, globs, or the files a PR’s review comments flag. To create the standards it reads, use distill-coding-standards; to wire up a fresh repo, use setup-coding-standards.
Prerequisites
Standards to apply: a CODING_STANDARDS/CODING_STANDARDS.md in the repo (from setup-coding-standards) and/or generic standards distilled into the skill’s own standards/ folder. With neither in place it says so and continues the task without.
Fix or flag, always with a citation
Every in-scope file is checked against every rule its maps route to. A violation is either fixed or — when the fix would change behavior or outgrow the rule — flagged, and either way the rule is cited as doc#rule. Generic rules name roles (“the notification helper”) rather than project names; the dominant usage in sibling code is what binds a role to your codebase. Precedence is fixed: your explicit instructions, then project rules, then generic standards.
It’s working if
- Every change or flag carries a
doc#rulecitation you can open. - Only the maps the change touches were loaded — not the whole standards tree.
- The summary lists rules applied and flags raised, file by file.
Where it fits
The payoff step of the coding-standards chain — the one that runs constantly, model-invoked, while the others are occasional and user-invoked: setup-coding-standards scaffolds, distill-coding-standards fills, validate-distilled-coding-standards verifies, this skill applies while writing, review-with-coding-standards reviews PRs with the same rules, and amend-coding-standards edits one rule at a time. For the map of the whole set, see ask-eddy.