silent-fail-checklisted

Use this skill ONLY when Naveen explicitly types /silent-fail-check after a file has been generated. Do NOT trigger automatically after every file generation. This is a manual, on-demand verification skill — not an auto-firing protocol. When triggered, verify the most recently generated file: check file existence, size sanity, file type validation, and content extraction. This skill prevents the class of bugs where a script exits with returncode 0, prints a success message, but produces an empty, corrupt, or near-empty file because a library silently ignored invalid parameters or failed to write content. Trigger: /silent-fail-check — and only this. Never auto-apply.
ElephantHunters/Navma-Skills · ★ 0 · AI & Automation · score 70

Install: claude install-skill ElephantHunters/Navma-Skills

# Silent Fail Check A post-generation verification protocol born from a real incident: a ReportLab PDF script exited cleanly, printed "PDF generated successfully", but produced a 5.3KB file with no visible content — because `ROUNDEDCORNERS` is not a valid TableStyle property and was silently ignored. **Rule**: Only run this checklist when Naveen types `/silent-fail-check`. Do not auto-trigger after every file generation. --- ## The Core Problem Libraries like ReportLab, python-docx, and openpyxl silently skip unknown style properties, invalid parameters, and empty content blocks. They do not raise exceptions. `returncode == 0` and a success print statement mean the script ran — not that the output is correct. --- ## Verification Checklist Run ALL applicable checks immediately after any file is generated. ### 1. File existence ```bash ls -lh /path/to/output.file ``` - File must exist - If missing: script failed to write — check path and permissions ### 2. File size sanity check (most important) | File type | Suspicious if under | Likely healthy above | |---------------|---------------------|----------------------| | PDF (1 page) | 15 KB | 25 KB | | PDF (5+ pages)| 40 KB | 80 KB | | DOCX | 8 KB | 15 KB | | XLSX | 6 KB | 10 KB | | PPTX | 20 KB | 50 KB | | PNG/JPG | 5 KB |