Tooltips Skill

How this skill behaves (read first)

This is a generative skill. The default failure modes: tooltip-as-crutch (an unclear interface "fixed" by sprinkling hover hints everywhere), redundancy ("Submit" button + "Click to submit" tooltip), and vital info in hover space (content users must see, hidden behind an interaction many will never perform — and that touch devices can't perform reliably). A tooltip is a supplement for genuinely ambiguous elements — never a load-bearing part of the flow. This skill gates:

1. Gate each tooltip's existence — is the element actually ambiguous, or is the design unclear?
2. Apply the always-true core — placement, brevity, styling, cursor signaling.
3. Surface the escalation decisions — when a tooltip is the wrong tool entirely.

Then it hands off to ux-heuristics-audit, ux-accessibility-audit, ux-aesthetics-audit, and ux-microcopy-audit for validation.

Step 0 — Gate each tooltip's existence

Three questions per tooltip: