skills/ + optional-skills/ — bundled skills, authoring standards, curator

Applies on top of the root AGENTS.md. Long-form: website/docs/developer-guide/creating-skills.md; user docs: website/docs/user-guide/features/skills.md, curator.md.

Two surfaces

• skills/ — built-in, loadable by default, organised by category (skills/github/, skills/mlops/).
• optional-skills/ — heavier/niche skills shipped but NOT active; installed via hermes skills install official/<category>/<skill> (adapter tools/skills_hub_official.py OptionalSkillSource). Categories: autonomous-ai-agents, blockchain, communication, creative, devops, email, health, mcp, migration, mlops, productivity, research, security, web-development.

Reviewing a skill PR: check the target directory — heavy-dep or niche skills go to optional-skills/.

SKILL.md frontmatter

name, description, version, author, license, platforms (OS gate: [macos], [linux, macos], ...), metadata.hermes.tags, metadata.hermes.category, metadata.hermes.related_skills, metadata.hermes.config (config.yaml settings the skill needs — stored under skills.config.<key>, prompted during setup, injected at load). Top-level tags: / category: are accepted and mirrored from metadata.hermes.* by the loader.

Authoring standards (HARDLINE — enforced by tests/skills/test_authoring_standards.py)

Every new or modernised skill — bundled, optional, or contributed — meets all of these before merge:

1. description ≤ 60 chars, one sentence, ends with a period. Long descriptions bloat listings and dilute attention when many skills load. State the capability, not the implementation; no marketing words ("powerful", "comprehensive", "seamless", "advanced"); don't repeat the name or the category name (the skill index already prints the category above the skill). 60 is the width the index shows (SKILL_PROMPT_DESC_LIMIT); skill_manage rejects a new or changed description over it.
2. Prose references native Hermes tools or the MCP servers the skill expects, in backticks (terminal, web_extract, read_file, patch, search_files, vision_analyze, browser_exec, delegate_task). Never name shell utilities the agent has wrapped: grep → search_files, cat/head/tail → read_file, sed/awk → patch, find/ls → search_files target='files'. MCP dependencies are named with setup in ## Prerequisites. Third-party CLIs and pipelines are fine inside script files, not as the headline surface.

3. platforms: gating is audited against actual script imports. POSIX-only primitives (hardcoded /tmp, fcntl, termios, os.setsid, os.kill(pid, 0), /proc, signal.SIGKILL, bash heredocs, osascript, apt, systemctl) require a platform declaration. Fix cross-platform first (tempfile.gettempdir, pathlib.Path, psutil.pid_exists, Python filtering instead of grep); gate narrower only when the dependency is genuinely platform-bound.
4. author credits the human first. External contributor's real name + GitHub handle first, "Hermes Agent" second. A commit authored as "Hermes Agent" (they drafted with Hermes) is replaced with the human's name — credit the human, not the tool.
5. Modern section order: # <Skill> Skill, 2–3 sentence intro (what it does and doesn't), ## When to Use, ## Prerequisites, ## How to Run, ## Quick Reference, ## Procedure, ## Pitfalls, ## Verification. ~200 lines for a complex skill, ~100 simple. Cut intro fluff, marketing prose, and env-var re-explanations already in Prerequisites.
6. scripts/, references/, templates/. Don't make the model inline-write parsers or non-trivial logic every call — ship a helper script and reference it by skill-relative path.
7. Tests at tests/skills/test_<skill>_skill.py, stdlib + pytest + unittest.mock only, no live network. Run scripts/run_tests.sh tests/skills/test_<skill>_skill.py -q.
8. .env.example additions sit in a clearly delimited block. Contributor copies of the file are usually stale; edits outside the skill's own block are dropped during salvage.

No offset/limit pagination on skill-loading tools — the agent must read a skill fully (root). The salvage/modernisation checklist for external skill PRs is references/new-skill-pr-salvage.md in the hermes-agent-dev skill.

Curator (skill lifecycle)

Background maintenance that tracks usage on agent-created skills and auto-archives stale ones; archives go to ~/.hermes/skills/.archive/ and are restorable. Core agent/curator.py (review loop, auto-transitions, LLM review prompt) + agent/curator_backup.py (pre-run tar.gz snapshots); CLI hermes_cli/curator.py → hermes curator status|run|pause|resume|pin|unpin|archive|restore| prune|backup|rollback; telemetry tools/skill_usage.py owns ~/.hermes/skills/.usage.json (use_count, view_count, patch_count, last_activity_at, state active/stale/archived, pinned). Config curator: — enabled, interval_hours, min_idle_hours, stale_after_days, archive_after_days, backup.*; its LLM calls route through auxiliary (agent/AGENTS.md).

Invariants: touches only created_by: "agent" skills (bundled + hub-installed are off-limits; prune_builtins lets the deterministic inactivity walk archive bundled skills but never adds them to the LLM pass's candidate list, and neither are skills.disabled names, which skill_view refuses — the fork must only be offered skills it can read and write); never deletes — archive is the maximum; pinned skills are exempt from every auto-transition and the LLM review; skill_manage(action="delete") refuses pinned skills while patch/edit/write_file/ remove_file still work so the agent can keep improving them.