Skill Lifecycle

Use this Skill when

A Technology Intelligence candidate has reached SANDBOX_TESTED and the Captain wants to advance it through:

APPROVED → AVAILABLE_SKILL → PROVEN_SKILL

or an existing Skill should graduate toward PROVEN proficiency using successful Experience evidence (training loop).

For earlier stages (DISCOVERED → SANDBOX_TESTED) use Skill candidate-promotion.

Inputs

• Candidate JSON (staging or fixture) at SANDBOX_TESTED or later
• Evidence paths
• Explicit --captain-approved for every post-sandbox stage
• Skill slug (for AVAILABLE proposals and Experience matching)
• Experience store under .agent/experience/ (for PROVEN)

Procedure

1. Confirm candidate is at least SANDBOX_TESTED and approved_for_execution is false.

2. Captain-approved advance to APPROVED:

   ./scripts/promote-candidate.sh --candidate <path.json> \
     --stage APPROVED \
     --evidence .agent/evidence/approval.md \
     --captain-approved \
     --skill-slug <slug>

3. Emit AVAILABLE_SKILL install proposal (never live install):

   ./scripts/promote-candidate.sh --candidate <staging.json> \
     --stage AVAILABLE_SKILL \
     --evidence .agent/evidence/approval.md \
     --captain-approved \
     --skill-slug <slug>

   Review .agent/capabilities/candidates/available-proposals/<slug>/. Open a Captain-reviewed PR to copy into .cursor/skills/<slug>/ only after approval.

4. After the Skill is used successfully in real workstreams, record Experiences (execution-telemetry / record-execution-run.sh) with skills_used including the slug. When ≥2 successful Experiences exist, advance to PROVEN_SKILL:

   ./scripts/promote-candidate.sh --candidate <staging.json> \
     --stage PROVEN_SKILL \
     --evidence .agent/evidence/proven.md \
     --captain-approved \
     --skill-slug <slug>

   Override threshold with COMPASS_PROVEN_SUCCESS_THRESHOLD if needed.

5. Optional training draft from Experience: Skill experience-skill-training (./scripts/train-skill-from-experience.sh). Learning-run Experiences: Skill skill-learning-loop (bridge-learning-experiences.sh).
6. Re-run ./scripts/compile-capability-registry.sh after any live Skill PR merges.

M40: content-addressed Skill inodes

Every Skill has an immutable inode at .cursor/skills/inodes/<sha256>.json (SHA-256 over SKILL.md + capability.yaml). Skill identity is content, not slug:

• Editing a Skill produces a new inode; the old inode is immutable history.
• Experience/proficiency reputation pins to the inode hash it was earned on.
• Reputation carry-over to a changed Skill's new inode requires ./scripts/build-skill-inodes.sh --captain-approved (Captain gate); otherwise the new inode carries reputation.captain_approved: false.
• doctor.sh fails closed when committed inodes are stale — rerun ./scripts/build-skill-inodes.sh after editing any Skill.
• The compiled registry embeds provenance.content_hash + skill_inode per Skill entry.

Output

• Staging candidate with updated lifecycle_stage
• AVAILABLE proposal under .agent/capabilities/candidates/available-proposals/
• PROVEN staging record when Experience threshold met

Prohibited actions

• Auto-installing into .cursor/skills/
• Setting approved_for_execution: true
• Advancing past SANDBOX_TESTED without --captain-approved
• Mutating matcher weights from lifecycle advances