onboarding-validator

What problem does it solve?

This Skill solves the costly problem of new developers wasting hours struggling with broken setup procedures, missing documentation, and inconsistent tooling when joining a project, which leads to frustration, wasted engineering time, and early team churn.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Comprehensive Onboarding Audit: Checks for all required project files (README, CONTRIBUTING.md, .env.example, version pin files, bootstrap scripts) and validates their completeness and correctness against 2026 DevEx best practices.
• Setup Workflow Validation: Runs the project's bootstrap script in a clean container to catch breakages, verifies README code blocks work when copy-pasted, and checks for consistent tool version pinning across files.
• DevEnvironment Readiness Checks: Ensures devcontainer/Codespaces configurations are present and functional, environment variables are properly documented without real secrets, and project structure is clearly documented for new contributors.
• Use Case: An engineering lead preparing a new open source project for external contributors can run this validator to fix all onboarding gaps upfront, reducing new contributor time-to-first-run from hours to minutes and lowering contributor churn.

Quick Start

Use the onboarding-validator skill to audit your project's developer onboarding setup and receive a prioritized list of fixes to cut time-to-first-hello-world.