VL MSA

Use VL-MSA for durable searchable source material. Collections persist across sessions; BM25 works without embeddings, while hybrid reranking is optional.

Select response language

Choose the language for explanations and answers in this order:

1. the user's explicit language preference;
2. the language of the current request;
3. a reliable client or system locale;
4. English.

Keep collection IDs, document IDs, tool names, metadata fields and quoted source text unchanged unless the user explicitly asks to translate them.

Locate, then ground

Retrieval has two required steps:

1. Call msa_search {collection, query, k} to locate relevant chunks.
2. Call msa_fetch_doc for the selected hit before using it as evidence.

Search chunks are locators, not complete sources. Do not answer a context-dependent question from truncated snippets alone.

Index material

• Use msa_index for one document or note.
• Use msa_index_batch for bulk ingest.
• Group related material into a stable named collection.
• Inspect msa_list_collections, msa_stats or msa_manifest before assuming a collection exists or is populated.

Index only material the user is authorized to store. Preserve provenance and do not place credentials or unrelated personal data in collection metadata.

Manage standalone memories

• Use msa_remember for a standalone agent memory. Its deduplication and low-signal gate may decline a write.
• Use msa_forget for an explicitly requested removal.

Do not claim a memory was stored or removed until the tool confirms the outcome.

Handle multi-hop questions

Use msa_interleave_round for one bounded route, deduplicate and read step. Repeat only as needed, carrying forward the grounded facts from the prior round. Avoid a single unbounded search.

Choose ranking

• Use BM25 by default.
• Pass dense_alpha only when the server is built and configured for hybrid retrieval.
• Do not describe lexical-only results as semantic retrieval.

If no VL-MSA tool is available and this skill is packaged with NexusCrew, the optional companion is documented in ../../MCP_COMPANIONS.md. Explain the missing capability and ask before installing or configuring anything.

Dependencies

Bundled: nothing — this skill is documentation only.

External (you must provide):

Without the companion, durable retrieval is simply unavailable in that session: say so and suggest the companion once instead of reading the server's on-disk collections directly (which this skill forbids).