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skill-time-sensitive-content

SKILL.md should avoid time-sensitive references

Warning Configurable

Rule Details

Skills should contain evergreen content that remains accurate over time. Relative time words ("today", "yesterday", "this week") are always flagged. Specific dates ("January 15, 2025", "2025-01-15") are only flagged if they are older than maxAgeDays (default: 180 days). This allows recently-added dates to exist without noise while catching stale references.

Incorrect

SKILL.md body with a specific date reference

markdown
---
name: deploy-app
description: Deploys the application
---

Updated on January 15, 2025 to support the new API.

SKILL.md body with relative time reference

markdown
---
name: deploy-app
description: Deploys the application
---

This week we migrated to the new deploy pipeline.

Correct

SKILL.md body with evergreen language

markdown
---
name: deploy-app
description: Deploys the application
---

Uses the current deploy pipeline with zero-downtime rollouts.

Version references instead of dates

markdown
---
name: deploy-app
description: Deploys the application
---

Supports API v2 and later.

How To Fix

Replace specific dates with version references or relative terms that age well. For example, use "recent versions" instead of "this month" and "API v2+" instead of "the January 2025 API update".

Options

Default options:

json
{
  "maxAgeDays": 180
}

Only flag dates older than 1 year:

json
{
  "maxAgeDays": 365
}

Flag dates older than 90 days:

json
{
  "maxAgeDays": 90
}

When Not To Use It

If the skill documentation intentionally tracks a changelog or release history with dates, you may disable this rule for that specific file.

Resources

Version

Available since: v0.2.0