Skill Builder

Create, repair, audit or export one canonical skill package, or turn supported expertise into a small authoring proposal.

Decide whether to create anything

Apply these before any creation step, including when the request already names the new skill or file it wants:

1. Find the existing owner. Search skills, references, checklists and instruction files for one that already handles the behavior. Extend that owner rather than adding a root.
2. Count independent occurrences. A new skill, gate, library or workflow needs three independently evidenced real occurrences and a successful reapplication to a source case without missing context. Fewer occurrences support only a narrow note in an existing owner; one incident is an observation, not a skill. An authoritative source supports only a faithful statement of that source.
3. Name the consumer of every new artifact. A proposed process artifact (a report, ledger, counter, dashboard or tracker) needs a concrete consumer, the decision it informs, the observed defect it answers and a retirement condition. If any is missing, leave it out; code written only to consume it is no consumer.
4. No action is a valid result, and so is a short addition to an existing owner. Say what the evidence supports before drafting, build only what the caller then authorizes, and return a proposal inline unless a durable one was requested.
5. A built package proves no benefit. Route behavioral benefit to Skill Eval and acceptance judgment to Validate.

Choose the requested operation

<skill-dir> is the directory that contains this SKILL.md. Claude Code shows it as "Base directory for this skill"; Codex lists this skill's SKILL.md path; in an AgentOps source checkout it is skills/skill-builder. Replace <skill-dir> with that absolute path before running a command. The working directory stays the user's repository. If the host did not show where this skill is installed, use the directory of the SKILL.md you read. If you cannot determine it, do not guess a path or run a same-named script from the current repository; say the bundled script is unavailable and apply the rules and doctrine here to the package by hand and use its repository's own checks.

Run only the selected operation. build.sh and heal.sh --fix work on skills/ of an AgentOps source checkout and refuse with exit 2 elsewhere, such as from a plugin install, instead of writing into its cache; heal.sh --fix checks the source first, so a target with findings exits 1 before that refusal. heal.sh in either mode checks only its own root's skills/ and resolves a relative target there, not in the current directory. For a skill in another repository or a user's skills directory, apply the rules and doctrine here to that directory and use its own checks; audit.sh resolves targets from the current directory and has portable and external-observation profiles, so it is the bundled check there. Roots, inputs, report destinations, exit codes and recovery from partial creation are in build and check mechanics.

Create and maintain

Treat external skills as structural signals only. Clean-room output must not copy their names, prose, prompts, scripts or examples. Every creation mode writes the same blank scaffold: from-template only checks the named skill and records it as source_hint, and absorb-external only verifies its input. Neither imports another skill's content or metadata.

build.sh creates one incomplete source package containing only SKILL.md with metadata.authoring_state: scaffold; helpers, references and assets are conditional on the actual behavior. Replace the placeholders and state applicability, inputs, authority, result, completion and failure in the layout that makes them clear. An ending such as "hand off" or "then stop" can end the caller's turn when the skill runs inline; read endings before writing one. Remove the scaffold state only after authoring the behavior; strict source checks reject it. Removing it is an author assertion, not proof of semantic completeness.

Before editing a skill after a miss or a review finding, read changing existing text; it decides when text stays unchanged, when a list stays explicit, and what to check before cutting a line.

Edit skills/<slug>/ as the source owner. Check the completed source with bash "<skill-dir>/scripts/heal.sh" --check --strict skills/<slug>. In an AgentOps source checkout only, run bash scripts/regen-all.sh from the repository root to regenerate every owned projection, including plugin/skills/; bash "<skill-dir>/scripts/heal.sh" --fix skills/<slug> regenerates only the skill mesh and leaves plugin copies unchanged. Inspect the generated diff; hand-edit no projection. A clean check says nothing about behavior: when an edit changes when the skill routes, what it asks, when it stops, what it commits or publishes or how it degrades, or cuts a line that recorded provenance protects, report that behavior as unmeasured unless a Skill Eval result measured that behavior, and name what was missing (a runner, a host or the caller's authorization). Typo, path and formatting edits need no such note.

Creation is staged, not atomic. If a later stage fails, keep the created source and any report and follow recovery; never call a partial result a completed package or delete it to rerun creation. A missing script, reference or runtime blocks only the operation that needs it; name it and continue the rest.

The default audit reports conformance, effects, behavior and authoring suspicions separately, with no total or verdict; effects and behavior stay NOT_PROVEN because it runs no skill. Checks, exit codes and the opt-in legacy schema are in audit checks; what Codex reads is in Codex parity.

Consolidate

Merge only when two skills own the same behavior; a shared passage or two is a cross-link, not a merge. Apply the decision rules above, then pick one owner: keep the skill with the stronger contract (clearer applicability, authority, result and failure path) and move into it only the rules the other has and it lacks. Before retiring the other name, search the skills, references, instruction files, goal prompts, workflows and docs for callers that invoke it by name, point each at the owner, and keep the old name until every caller does. In the AgentOps repository, also record the retired name and its new owner in docs/MIGRATION.md and add the slug to REMOVED_SKILLS in scripts/check-cathedral-cut-conformance.py, which fails if the skill comes back; never delete a skill there without that tombstone. A merge can move routing, so report as unmeasured whether the requests the retired skill caught now reach the owner unless a routing or Skill Eval result measured it.

Conversion

Run bash "<skill-dir>/scripts/converter/convert.sh" <source-skill-dir> <target> [output-dir] to export one package, or --all, to codex, cursor or test outside the shipped tree. Before an export, read running the converter for path resolution, the default output and its refusals. Preserve the source; fix the source or adapter, never the exported output.

Distill expertise

When the caller wants a reusable rule, apply the decision rules above and begin with cited occurrences or a named authoritative source. State the trigger, desired behavior, inputs, outputs, limits and a negative or holdout case the rule decides correctly, with short source excerpts and resolvable citations. Use Research's pattern mode when the claim needs exemplars and a holdout, and Memory's source and destination rules for mined material. A proposal-only request ends with the proposal. For an actual package edit, use the source template for required fields and the admission test in changing existing text to decide which prose earns a place.