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refactor(skills): retrofit the corpus to the ADR-0020 context contract (#129)

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Retrofits all 39 skills to ADR-0020's description/body context contract, then fixes what six rounds of independent review found in that retrofit — including four ways the hot gate itself failed open.

Closes #99, #107, #108, #110, #111, #114, #115, #120.

## The retrofit (waves 1-5)

| | Start | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Description FAILs (>400 chars) | 26 | **0** |
| Body FAILs (>900 words, body-only) | 9 | **0** |
| Dangling routing targets | 2 | **0** |
| `Kyberforge.CompositionNote` | 10 | **0** |
| Preload tax | 21,005 chars | **~10,500** |

Under the 12,000-char success criterion. Per-wave detail is on #99.

## The review fixes

**The gate failed open four ways, three of them found after the retrofit shipped.** An unrecognised follower token made a dangling target vanish. A skill directory with no `SKILL.md` resolved as a valid target, so a commit could be green locally and red in a fresh clone — three existing fixtures were relying on that, one of which made the install-leak A/B pass vacuously. Then the free-standing `/name` sweep turned out to be gated on the sentence carrying a boundary marker, so route notation in any other sentence was invisible — not an ERROR, not a SUGGESTION, not an INFO — which left the documented "`/name` always blocks" promise false from a second direction. All four fixed and pinned.

**Two checks were silently not running.** `validate-provenance.sh` checks 7-8 were dead across nine skills. Waking them exposed a deeper problem: they assume `Research doc:` names a source index, but 30 of 121 entries point at topic content documents, so every new check-7 INFO was a false positive and check 8 was saved from a false-FAIL flood only by an *unannounced* skip. Checks 7/8 are now scoped to source indexes and every skip announces itself (#121).

**The retrofit's own anti-goal, four times.** ADR-0020 warns that a blunt gate gets satisfied by deleting content rather than relocating it. `diagnose` and `skill-audit` relocated prose and then read it unconditionally; `prototype` and `vale-config` deleted rules outright that survived nowhere. All four addressed.

## Verification

- `bash tests/run-tests.sh --strict` — 24 suites, 0 skipped, 0 failed
- `bash tests/run-bats.sh` — 325 tests, 0 failures
- `pre-commit run --all-files` — 17/17
- `pre-commit run --hook-stage pre-push --all-files` — 16/16, with `apm marketplace check` and `apm pack --check-clean` run against the remote, not skipped
- `scripts/skill-size-check.sh` over all 39 skills — rc 0, 0 ERROR/FAIL, SUGGESTION-only
- Preload tax measured at **10,498 chars**, max description 390 — both inside budget
- Every new test proven non-vacuous by a deliberate mutation of the behaviour it covers

**Per-commit sync, stated accurately:** the ten commits from the latest review round each pass `check-plugin-content-sync` in isolation, verified by checking each out in a detached worktree with a clean between. The earlier gitea window (`dfacf05..bedbd1d`, nine commits) does **not** — its mirror was regenerated in one batch at `bbc7300`. An earlier revision of this description claimed the property held for every commit; it does not, and a bisect through that window lands on a red commit. **Squash-merge** to collapse it, or accept that this range is not bisectable.

## Version bump

Six plugins and the catalog take a **patch**, not a minor. The branch is **89 commits — 40 `fix` / 30 `refactor` / 12 `docs` / 5 `chore` / 2 `test` — zero `feat`, zero `!`, zero `BREAKING CHANGE`** — and adds no skill, agent, command or hook. (Two earlier revisions of this section cited a stale histogram, most recently 78 commits; the figures above are measured at HEAD.) Both rules this repo ships (`forge/references/version-bump.md`, landing in this PR, and `git-commits/references/conventional-commits-spec.md`) make that a patch, and the catalog set is unchanged at 7 entries.

Not settled by that: four published files were removed from the installed tree, three moved, and `caveman` gained `disable-model-invocation`, retiring its old triggers. Under a strict reading those are major-class and currently ship under `refactor:` with no marker. Whether the deployed skill surface is a public contract is written down nowhere — worth deciding, but it outlives this PR.

## Deliberately not in scope

#112 (cherry-pick ownership, now resolved in favour of `git-commits`), #113 (`rtk git` normalisation), #116 (research fan-out), #101 (audit-skill merge), #122 (non-spec skill-root files), #123 (no PRD producer) stay open. #117 is the one worth reading: the contract's remedy is to move prose into `references/`, which is exactly where neither the size gate nor Vale looks — and the blind spot is wider than #117 currently records, since there is no root `.vale.ini` at all, so every ADR, `CONTEXT.md` and `README.md` is unlinted too.

That blind spot let this branch carry two `level: error` `Kyberforge.SentenceOpenerThereIs` violations into `references/` files it created — `provider-adapter-author/references/provider-matrix.md:31` and `agent-audit/references/finding-criteria.md:95`. Both are reworded in `afadaae`, confirmed by routing each file through the audit's own `vale-wrap.sh` (1 error each before, 0 after). Five further occurrences sit in `references/` files already on `main`; those are the pre-existing corpus and stay with #117, which is the real fix.

Also unfixed and not this PR's: `apm install` appends a duplicate `SessionStart` entry to `.claude/settings.json`, so a fresh clone cannot get pre-push green without an edit AGENTS.md warns against. Reproduces identically on `main`.

Co-authored-by: Defame1297 <gitea@rkdr.net>
Reviewed-on: https://git.dev.rkdr.net/Defame1297/holocron/pulls/129
Co-authored-by: Claude Code AI - Gitea MCP <claude@noreply.git.dev.rkdr.net>
Co-committed-by: Claude Code AI - Gitea MCP <claude@noreply.git.dev.rkdr.net>
This commit was merged in pull request #129.
This commit is contained in:
Claude Code AI - Gitea MCP
2026-09-01 13:47:46 +00:00
committed by Defame1297
parent 0e91a3ae66
commit 598a7c326a
420 changed files with 15303 additions and 4740 deletions
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146
docs/adr/0020-skill-description-and-body-context-contract.md
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@@ -127,8 +127,15 @@ clause**, and a **boundary clause**. Capability enumeration, output-format detai
gate shipping hot with no baseline cannot give two answers. Under the walk-up those four resolve
because sibling plugins are in the universe — no plugin here declares a cross-plugin apm
dependency, and none needs to. Verified: a tree holding only `plugins/` and the root `apm.yml`,
with no `.claude/` or `.agents/` anywhere, now produces findings identical to the working tree —
26 description FAILs, 9 body FAILs, 2 dangling targets, 0 missing references, 58 SUGGESTIONs.
with no `.claude/` or `.agents/` anywhere, produced findings identical to the working tree. The
figures that reproduction recorded — 26 description FAILs, 9 body FAILs, 2 dangling targets, 0
missing references, 58 SUGGESTIONs — are the **pre-retrofit** corpus as it stood when the
experiment ran, kept here as the evidence for the install-independence claim, not as a current
reading. *Amended 2026-09-01: the #99 retrofit took the first three to zero. Measured at that
date over the same install-free tree: 0 description FAILs, 0 body FAILs, 0 dangling targets, 0
missing references, 29 SUGGESTIONs.* What the experiment establishes is that the two trees agree,
not what either measured; re-derive rather than quote —
`bash scripts/skill-size-check.sh plugins/*/.apm/skills/*/SKILL.md`.
- **The universe is the apm marketplace, and nothing else.** A routing target resolves to a skill or
an agent, or it does not resolve. Host built-ins are deliberately outside it: `/compact`, `/clear`
and `/init` are Claude Code slash commands with no counterpart in Copilot CLI or Codex, so a
@@ -185,8 +192,11 @@ becomes the system prompt of a fresh context. The rationale for the 900-word FAI
That exemption is expressed in `agent-audit/scripts/validate.sh`, which has no body constant, and in
the `files:` pattern of the `skill-size-check` pre-commit hook, which is `SKILL.md`-only. It is *not*
expressed in `scripts/skill-size-check.sh` itself, which measures whatever path it is handed —
running it directly over `plugins/*/.apm/agents/*.agent.md` today reports 900-word body FAILs on
`git-orchestrate` (933), `gitea-orchestrate` (1,199) and `apm-orchestrate` (1,080). Agents escape by
running it directly over `plugins/*/.apm/agents/*.agent.md` exits 1 with 900-word body FAILs on
`git-orchestrate` and `gitea-orchestrate`. *Amended 2026-09-01: this sentence named a third agent,
`apm-orchestrate`, at 1,080 words. It is 876 today — a SUGGESTION, not a FAIL. Counts are
deliberately no longer pinned here: agent bodies are edited like any other file and a figure in this
paragraph goes stale the moment one is trimmed. Run the command.* Agents escape by
file pattern, not by the script knowing the difference. Anyone widening that pattern to cover agents
would silently enforce a gate this ADR declines to set.
@@ -203,8 +213,14 @@ with no trigger list.
Verified end-to-end rather than assumed: `plugins/bin/.apm/skills/zoom-out/SKILL.md:4` carries the
flag, apm passes it through verbatim to both `.claude/skills/zoom-out/SKILL.md:4` and the flat mirror
at `plugins/bin/skills/zoom-out/SKILL.md:4`, and `zoom-out` is the one installed skill absent from
the model-visible skill listing in a live session. It remains invocable as `/zoom-out`.
at `plugins/bin/skills/zoom-out/SKILL.md:4`, and `zoom-out` was — at the time of that check, when it
was the only carrier — the one installed skill absent from the model-visible skill listing in a live
session. It remains invocable as `/zoom-out`. `caveman` has since taken the flag as well, so the
corpus now has **two** carriers. Do not read a carrier list off this page; re-derive it:
```
grep -l '^disable-model-invocation: true' plugins/*/.apm/skills/*/SKILL.md
```
### Merging siblings
@@ -219,10 +235,13 @@ rather than the core job.
skills still exist separately, and this change made the split deeper rather than shallower: retrofit
to the dispatch pattern took `skill-audit` from 3 reference files to 7 and `agent-audit` from 4 to 8,
and their two same-named `references/description-quality.md` files now differ on 100 of ~120 lines
after normalising `skill`/`agent`, where before they were closer. The merge stays the decision; it
reopens ADR-0008 (agent-audit's single-file invocation contract) and touches every call site in
`skill-author`, `agent-author` and `forge`, which is why it is its own change and not a rider on
this one. Recorded here rather than dropped, so the gap between the rule and the tree is deliberate
after normalising `skill`/`agent`, where before they were closer. It has kept deepening since: the
#99 retrofit added `finding-criteria.md` to `skill-audit`, drawing it level with `agent-audit`. Both
figures move with the next retrofit, so measure rather than quote —
`ls plugins/kyberforge/.apm/skills/<name>/references/ | grep -c '\.md$'`. The merge stays the
decision; it reopens ADR-0008 (agent-audit's single-file invocation contract) and touches every call
site in `skill-author`, `agent-author` and `forge`, which is why it is its own change and not a rider
on this one. Recorded here rather than dropped, so the gap between the rule and the tree is deliberate
and dated instead of discovered later.
### Enforcement and rollout
@@ -233,11 +252,13 @@ which tier each rule is in, because the failure this ADR is most exposed to is a
| Check | Applies to | Tier | Home |
|---|---|---|---|
| description characters (250 SUGGESTION / 400 FAIL) | skills, agents | deterministic | `scripts/skill-size-check.sh`; constants mirrored in `skill-audit/scripts/validate.sh` and `agent-audit/scripts/validate.sh` |
| description characters (250 SUGGESTION † / 400 FAIL) | skills, agents | deterministic | `scripts/skill-size-check.sh`; constants mirrored in `skill-audit/scripts/validate.sh` and `agent-audit/scripts/validate.sh` |
| body-only words (600 SUGGESTION / 900 FAIL) | skills | deterministic | `skill-size-check.sh`, `skill-audit/scripts/validate.sh` |
| description present and non-empty (ERROR) | skills, agents | deterministic | same |
| boundary target resolves to a real skill or agent (ERROR when written as `/name` or `-> name`, or when its own sentence names another target that resolves; SUGGESTION otherwise) | skills, agents | deterministic | same |
| boundary clause absent (SUGGESTION) | skills, agents | deterministic | same |
| boundary target resolves to a real skill or agent — **three** verdicts, not two (ERROR when written in route notation — `/name`, or any arrow form; or when a *terminal* bare name's own sentence names another target that resolves. SUGGESTION otherwise. INFO, "DID NOT RUN", exit 0, when no skill universe could be determined for the path at all — no authoring root above it, no apm package root, no declared apm dependencies, no deployed `.claude/` or `.agents/` tree: the targets are named and left unchecked) | skills, agents | deterministic | same |
| boundary clause absent — `absent` (SUGGESTION) † | skills, agents | deterministic | same |
| an arrow clause is present but no target can be read out of it — `unparsed` (SUGGESTION) † | skills, agents | deterministic | same |
| one arrow clause naming two or more targets, of which only the first is resolved (SUGGESTION, issue #107) † | skills, agents | deterministic | same |
| Gotchas entry count over five (SUGGESTION) | skills | deterministic | same |
| Gotchas over 25% of the body (SUGGESTION) | skills | deterministic | same |
| every `references/<file>.md` a body names exists (ERROR) | skills | deterministic | same |
@@ -254,6 +275,21 @@ that guessed at them would be a worse gate than no gate, because it would be bel
enforced, they are reviewed, and this table exists so that distinction is written down rather than
inferred from whether a validator happens to have been written yet.
**† These four, and only these four, are lifted for a hand-invoked file** — one whose frontmatter
carries `disable-model-invocation: true`, read as a boolean by `hand_invoked()` in all three scripts.
No validator knew the field existed (issue **#108**), so every routing SUGGESTION above fired on
exactly the shape the *Invocation as a design axis* section mandates, and the boundary-clause
remedy — "so the router knows where NOT to send this skill" — was addressed to a router that cannot
see the skill at all. An author who took the advice made the file worse.
What does **not** lift is the point of the carve-out. Both body word tiers stand: the body is still
loaded on invocation and still competes with the caller's live conversation. The 400-character
description FAIL stands: that description is not preloaded, but it is the one line a user reads when
choosing from the `/` menu, and the ceiling is an outlier stop rather than a routing-quality budget —
which is exactly why the 250-character *target* is the tier that lifts. And a target the description
does happen to name is still resolved and can still dangle as a blocking ERROR. Mechanics, and the
reason the field is read as a boolean rather than as a mention of the key: `docs/spec/gates.md`.
Two of the deterministic rows are tuned for **false positives over recall**, and what they decline to
see is part of the contract. On target extraction: a bare hyphenated name counts only inside a
boundary sentence, and a single-word name is never matchable bare — `research`, `triage`, `forge`,
@@ -264,7 +300,8 @@ raise an error: one followed by an ordinary lowercase noun is a compound **modif
confirm-only — it still resolves and still counts as a route when the name exists, but it can never
dangle. Only a *terminal* target can. The compressed arrow form `→ <name>` is exempt from that
follower test and is always error-eligible, because nothing reads as a compound modifier after an
arrow; a `/slash` target reached through a route verb is **not** exempt and takes the same test. The
arrow; a `/slash` target reached through a route verb is **not** exempt and takes the same test.
*Amended 2026-08-31 — the `/slash` half is reversed: it is exempt too. See the amendment below.* The
simpler rule — "only marked targets may dangle" — was available and would have been wrong here: both
live true positives are bare, `research`'s "(use neuledge-context)" and the `gitea-labels-` /
`milestones` fold. On the body-shape checks: a `## Gotchas` heading must *end* in "gotchas", not
@@ -296,6 +333,46 @@ Three pre-existing contradictions are fixed in the same change, because they are
- `description-quality.md:45-50` has no FAIL condition for internal-mechanics content, which is why
`skill-author/SKILL.md:102` never bit.
## Amendment (2026-08-31): route notation short-circuits the follower test, `/name` included
The Enforcement section above exempts the arrow form from the follower test and then withholds the
same exemption from `/name`: "a `/slash` target reached through a route verb is **not** exempt and
takes the same test." That half is reversed. **Both spellings of route notation are exempt, and the
exemption is decided before the follower test rather than weighed against it.**
Three things make the original call wrong rather than merely strict.
**It contradicted the promise the same paragraph makes.** Route notation is offered to an author as
the way to get a target checked unconditionally — the SUGGESTION text on an unpromoted target says
so in as many words: "write it as `/name` or `-> name` and it will be checked properly." Under the
original rule that was true of one of the two spellings. `-> name` reached `_add()` with
`strict=True` from both its call sites; `/name` did not, so it fell through to `_terminal()` and any
follower outside `FOLLOWER_OK` demoted it. `Do not use for Y — use /no-such-skill afterwards.` exited
0 — and, before the companion visibility fix, in total silence.
**The follower test's own justification does not reach `/name`.** That test exists for *prose*: a
bare hyphenated token followed by an ordinary lowercase noun is a compound modifier, "pre-commit
hooks" and "pull-request template". A leading slash is Claude Code's invocation syntax and occurs in
no English compound, so there is no attributive reading to protect. The exemption was withheld from
the one shape the rule it protects against cannot describe.
**`FOLLOWER_OK` is a closed whitelist of roughly eighty words, and a closed list is the wrong thing
to hang a blocking gate on.** Leaving `/name` under it made *whether a commit is blocked* depend on
whether someone had thought to enumerate the next word — the gate failing open on its own
unfamiliarity. The bare-target path keeps the follower test precisely because it needs a brake it can
justify; the notation path asked for one and was given the same brake by accident.
What is unchanged: the **corroboration** branch. A *bare* terminal name still earns its blocking
ERROR only from a resolving sibling in the same sentence, and a compound modifier still cannot
dangle at all. The conservative tuning that decision rests on is untouched — this amendment moves one
explicitly-marked spelling out from under it, not the prose path.
Verified on fixtures inside a synthetic plugin tree: `… Do not use for Y — use /no-such-skill
afterwards.` exits 1, while the same sentence with the bare `no-such-skill` exits 0 at SUGGESTION,
and rises to a blocking ERROR the moment a resolving sibling joins it. The reasoning is recorded at
the point of enforcement in `_add()`'s docstring in `scripts/skill-size-check.sh` and its two
mirrored copies, and the verdict table in `docs/spec/gates.md` states the corrected shape.
## Consequences
**Editing any non-compliant skill now requires retrofitting it first.** At decision time, 30 of 39
@@ -311,10 +388,17 @@ carries is the ordinary one for hot gates: a gate expensive enough to be inconve
with `SKIP=` and loses its authority.
**A second hot gate ships alongside it, and it is easy to miss.** `Kyberforge.CompositionNote` is
`level: error` like every other rule in that style, so `pre-commit run --all-files` is red on 10
alerts across `gitea-issues`, `gitea-labels-milestones`, `gitea-prs` and `gitea-workflow`
independently of anything `skill-size-check` reports. Someone scoping the #99 retrofit off the size
findings alone will fix those and still be blocked. The two gates want fixing together.
`level: error` like every other rule in that style, so at decision time `pre-commit run --all-files`
was red on 10 alerts across `gitea-issues`, `gitea-labels-milestones`, `gitea-prs` and
`gitea-workflow` independently of anything `skill-size-check` reports. Someone scoping the #99
retrofit off the size findings alone would have fixed those and still been blocked. The two gates
wanted fixing together, and were. *Amended 2026-09-01: that figure is historical. The Vale prefilter
over the same 39 files now reports 0 errors, 0 warnings and 0 suggestions, so
`Kyberforge.CompositionNote` fires nowhere in the corpus today. The rule is still hot and still
independent of `skill-size-check`, so a new description can reintroduce it; `skill-size-check` does
not cover the Vale half, and no `references/` file is linted by anything (`docs/spec/gates.md` has
both causes, issue #117 tracks them). Re-derive rather than quote —*
`bash plugins/kyberforge/.apm/skills/skill-audit/scripts/vale-wrap.sh plugins/*/.apm/skills/*/SKILL.md`.
**A ceiling does not produce an average.** If every author writes to the 400-character FAIL, the
preload lands at 39 × 400 = 15,600 chars — a 33% cut off 23,427, not the ~50% intended. Writing to
@@ -342,8 +426,8 @@ and `git-*` families — where every sibling shares a keyword and boundary claus
— are the ones most likely to sit at the FAIL tier permanently. If the retrofit shows that family
routing degrades, the tier is the first thing to revisit.
**Four broken routing targets were found; two are fixed here and two are live.** Tracked as issue
#100.
**Four broken routing targets were found; two were fixed here and two shortly after.** Tracked as
issue #100.
- `skill-audit` routed to `/skill-improve` twice in its description plus `README.md:10`, and no such
skill exists — the real target is `skill-author`. **Fixed here**, as a side effect of retrofitting
@@ -353,14 +437,24 @@ routing degrades, the tier is the first thing to revisit.
detectable by the resolvable-target check and never will be: "examine agent files manually" names
no target, and a check that resolves names cannot see a name that is absent. A misroute to nowhere
is a review finding, not a gate finding.
- `research` routes to `neuledge-context`, which exists only inside that string. **Live.**
- `research` routes to `neuledge-context`, which exists only inside that string. Was **live**;
**fixed under #99** — the retrofitted description names no such target.
- `gitea-issues` carries the literal string `gitea-labels- milestones` in its folded description, a
stray space introduced by YAML wrapping mid-token, breaking the skill name in preloaded text.
**Live** — the check reports it as a dangling `gitea-labels`.
stray space introduced by YAML wrapping mid-token, breaking the skill name in preloaded text. Was
**live**, reported as a dangling `gitea-labels`; **fixed under #99** — the name now folds intact.
So the check fires on 3 of the 4 against the base commit and on 2 at the tip of this change, and
`tests/test-skill-size-check.sh` probes exactly those three by name rather than asserting a count, so
it degrades to SKIP as #100 lands rather than going stale.
So the check fired on 3 of the 4 against the base commit and on 2 at the tip of the change that
carried this ADR. **The corpus dangling set is now empty**, and that is asserted rather than
observed: `tests/test-adr0020-targets.sh` pins the set as empty, so a new boundary clause naming a
non-existent skill fails the suite instead of joining a backlog. `tests/test-skill-size-check.sh`
probed the three original names rather than asserting a count; as each was retrofitted its probe was
**removed, not skipped**, because a `pass "SKIP: …"` branch is an assertion-free result counted in
the totals and makes the suite look one test stronger than it is. That file's commentary survives the
probes and states the rule. Re-derive the current set — never read it off this page:
```
bash scripts/skill-size-check.sh plugins/*/.apm/skills/*/SKILL.md | grep 'does not resolve'
```
**Duplication between `skill-author` and `agent-author` survives un-gated.** The merge rule
deliberately excludes the author pair, so the commit-verification argument in four near-copies, the

262
docs/spec/gates.md
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@@ -98,11 +98,57 @@ loudly (`Error: jq is required but not installed`).
## Skill and agent context gates (ADR-0020)
The `skill-size-check` pre-commit hook, scoped to `^plugins/[^/]+/\.apm/skills/[^/]+/SKILL\.md$`,
runs `scripts/skill-size-check.sh`. That scope means it never lints the
`plugins/kyberforge/docs/research/examples/` reference skills. It is also shipped to external repos
as `kyberforge-skill-size-check` (see
runs `scripts/skill-size-check.sh`. It is also shipped to external repos as
`kyberforge-skill-size-check` (see
[External consumers](#external-consumers-the-root-pre-commit-hooksyaml)).
**Two things fall outside that scope, both deliberately.** The `[^/]+/SKILL\.md$` tail admits only a
`SKILL.md` sitting directly in a skill directory under `.apm/skills/`:
- the `plugins/kyberforge/docs/research/examples/` reference skills, which are vendored upstream
corpus and not this repo's to gate;
- `plugins/kyberforge/.apm/skills/skill-author/assets/templates/SKILL.md` — inside `.apm/skills/`,
but two directories deeper. It is the `FILL IN:` scaffold `skill-author` copies, so its
`description: >` is a comment block rather than a description and every ADR-0020 measurement over
it would be meaningless. A reader adjusting the pattern needs to know it is there.
Everything else it matches exactly, with nothing over- or under-caught. Re-derive both halves:
```
git ls-files | grep -cE '^plugins/[^/]+/\.apm/skills/[^/]+/SKILL\.md$' # the real skills
git ls-files | grep -E '^plugins/[^/]+/\.apm/skills/.*SKILL\.md$' \
| grep -vE '^plugins/[^/]+/\.apm/skills/[^/]+/SKILL\.md$' # the scaffold only
```
The first count equals the number of skill directories (`ls -d plugins/*/.apm/skills/*/ | wc -l`);
the second returns exactly the template. The remaining unmatched `SKILL.md` files in the tree are the
generated flat mirror, which is excluded by the `.apm/` segment on purpose — a mirror edit is drift,
not an authoring change.
### `skill-frontmatter`, the other hook on that scope
A second `repo: local` pre-commit hook, `skill-frontmatter`, runs on the **same** `files:` pattern at
the same stage. It is a short shell loop: for each file, `grep -q "^name:"` and
`grep -q "^description:"`, failing with "missing required frontmatter fields" if either is absent.
**It overlaps ADR-0020's "description present and non-empty" FAIL, and the overlap is not clean.**
The ADR (`:95-101`) requires that question be decided on the **YAML-folded value** and nowhere else,
precisely because a line regex gets it wrong in both directions. Measured on fixtures:
| Frontmatter | `skill-frontmatter` | `skill-size-check` |
|---|---|---|
| `description:` with no value, then `model: sonnet` | passes — the key is on a line | ERROR, "missing or empty" |
| `"description": …` (quoted key, valid YAML) | **fails** — `^description:` does not match | passes, description read normally |
So the grep is not a second opinion on presence. It is blind to the shape ADR-0020 was written
against, and it is the only one of the two that objects to a quoted key. Neither disagreement is
currently live in the corpus, and the honest reading is that presence is `skill-size-check`'s
question — the grep's contribution to it is noise on one shape and silence on the other.
What the grep does add is the `name:` key, which **no** ADR-0020 check reads: a `SKILL.md` with no
`name:` passes `skill-size-check` at exit 0. That is its real and only unique coverage, and the
reason not to fold it into the size gate on the grounds of redundancy.
### Two independent gate families, neither replaced the other
**Family 1 — agentskills.io spec backstop** (unchanged, conformance not quality):
@@ -141,7 +187,7 @@ A boundary-clause target that resolves to no skill or agent has **three** possib
| Verdict | When |
|---|---|
| **SUGGESTION** — the default | the target does not resolve and neither promotion condition below holds |
| **blocking ERROR** | the target is **terminal** (not a compound modifier) **and** either written in route notation (`/name` for any name; `-> name` only when the name is hyphenated — see the gap below) **or** corroborated by another target in the same sentence that *does* resolve |
| **blocking ERROR** | the target is written in **route notation** — `/name` for any name, or any arrow form (a bare `-> name` only when the name is hyphenated, a backticked `` -> `name` `` for any — see the gap below); **or** it is a bare **terminal** name (not a compound modifier) **corroborated** by another target in the same sentence that *does* resolve |
| **INFO, "DID NOT RUN"** | no skill universe could be determined for the path at all — the targets are named and left unchecked, exit 0 |
The default is deliberately soft because a hyphenated word in a boundary clause is as likely to be a
@@ -149,14 +195,36 @@ tool, a file format or an English compound as a route: "pre-commit hooks" is pro
never reaches the check at all, being a compound modifier rather than a terminal name. The
SUGGESTION text says how to opt in — write it as `/name` or `-> name` and it gets checked properly.
**Known gap: the arrow form only works for hyphenated names.** Target extraction is built on
`NAME_HYPH` (`scripts/skill-size-check.sh:543`), which requires at least one hyphen, and
`ARROW_BOUNDARY` (`:561`) inherits that. So `-> gitea-prs` is extracted and checked, while
`-> triage` is not extracted at all — no ERROR, no SUGGESTION, exit 0. The unicode arrow `→` is not
recognised in either case. This makes the SUGGESTION's own advice unsafe for a single-word skill:
taking it silences the finding rather than checking it. `/name` has no such restriction and is the
form to prefer. Tracked as a defect; `tests/test-adr0020-targets.sh` has one arrow case and its
target happens to be hyphenated, so nothing currently covers this.
**The two promotion conditions are not symmetric, and the order matters.** `_add()` decides
**notation first**: when the name is written `/name`, or reached through any arrow form, the target
is marked error-eligible there and the terminal test is never run. Terminality gates only the *bare*
path — a name in prose earns its error from corroboration, and a compound modifier can never dangle.
Reading the row as "terminal AND (notation OR corroborated)" gets the notation half backwards: it
predicts that `` … Do not use for Y — use /no-such-skill afterwards. `` is a SUGGESTION, because
`afterwards` is a follower outside `FOLLOWER_OK`. It exits 1. That was the defect — `-> name` reached
`_add()` with `strict=True` from both its call sites and `/name` did not, so the one spelling
ADR-0020 offers an author who wants a route checked unconditionally was the one spelling a stray
follower could silence.
**Known gap: a BARE arrow target must be hyphenated.** Target extraction is built on `NAME_HYPH` in
`scripts/skill-size-check.sh`, which requires at least one hyphen, and `ARROW_BOUNDARY` inherits
that. So `Not X -> gitea-prs` is extracted and checked, while `Not X -> triage` yields no target.
The exclusion is deliberate, not an oversight: `research`, `triage`, `forge`, `prototype` and `tdd`
are all real skill names *and* ordinary English, so a bare single-word rule would flag most of the
corpus. The marked spellings carry no such restriction — `` `triage` `` and `/triage` are both
extracted — and are the forms to prefer. **Both arrow spellings are recognised:** `ARROW_MARKED`,
`ARROW_BOUNDARY` and `BOUNDARY_ARROW` are each built from `(?:->|→)`, so the unicode arrow `→`
behaves exactly like `->` in every case below. Cite these constants by symbol name, never by line
number: the script moves often enough that a pinned line lands a reader in an unrelated comment
block and reads as plausible.
**The gap is no longer silent.** It used to be exactly that — no ERROR, no SUGGESTION, exit 0 — which
made the dangling-target SUGGESTION's own advice unsafe for a single-word skill: taking it silenced
the finding instead of checking it. `boundary_clause_status()` now separates the case out and
reports it as `unparsed` (see below), naming the parse failure and the two spellings that fix it.
The target is still not *resolved*; the author is now told so rather than left with a green gate.
`tests/test-adr0020-targets.sh` covers both directions (`arrow-single-word-target` and the silent
control `arrow-single-word-marked`).
Corroboration is what makes the soft default safe: a sentence whose *other* target resolves is
demonstrably a routing sentence, so a sibling that does not resolve is a typo rather than a noun, and
@@ -200,17 +268,109 @@ through `.claude/skills/` alone, so **the same commit measured 2 dangling target
machine and 6 on a fresh clone**. A gate shipping hot with no baseline cannot give two answers.
Verified fixed: running the hook over a tree holding only `plugins/` and the root `apm.yml`, with no
`.claude/` or `.agents/` anywhere, produces findings identical to the working tree — **26 description
FAILs, 9 body FAILs, 2 dangling targets, 0 missing references, 58 SUGGESTIONs**.
`.claude/` or `.agents/` anywhere, produced findings identical to the working tree. The figures that
reproduction recorded — 26 description FAILs, 9 body FAILs, 2 dangling targets, 0 missing references
— are the pre-retrofit corpus as it stood when the experiment was run, kept here as the evidence for
the install-independence claim. They are not current: the retrofit under #99 took the first three to
zero. What the experiment establishes is that the two trees agree, not what either measured.
### Boundary-clause detection: three outcomes, not two
`boundary_clause_status()` returns one of three values, and the two findings get separate messages:
| Status | When | Reported as |
|---|---|---|
| `present` | a prose marker (`do not`, `instead`, `rather than`, `not for`) or an arrow clause was found | nothing |
| `absent` | neither was found | SUGGESTION: add a boundary clause, in either form |
| `unparsed` | an arrow clause was found and **no target could be read out of it** | SUGGESTION: the clause is present — this is a *parse* failure, not a missing clause |
The third had to be split out. Collapsing it into `absent` is a **wrong** finding, not a strict one:
it sends the author to add a clause that is already there. Three of them instead reworded a correct
clause until the regex accepted it, one stripping the very filename that discriminates the skill
from its neighbour (**#110**).
`unparsed` is narrow and certain on purpose. It fires only on the arrow form, which *always* names a
target, so zero targets means the name is written in a shape the extractor cannot see — in practice
a bare single-word target, per the known gap above, and the message says to write it `` `name` `` or
`/name`. A **prose** clause yielding no target is not reported at all: "Do not use for anything else"
is a complete and legitimate boundary clause that names nowhere to go.
**One arrow, one target.** An arrow clause naming two or more targets draws its own SUGGESTION,
quoting both names and asking for a split, because only the first is ever resolved: the conjunction
continuation (`CONT_MARKED` / `CONT_ANY`) is wired to the prose route verbs and never to arrows. So
`Not X -> a or b` resolved `a`, left `b` resolved by nothing and reported by nothing, and then let
the audit print "1 of 1 boundary target(s) resolve" on a clause naming two — a gate under-reporting
its own coverage, which is the one failure mode ADR-0020 says a gate must not have (**#107**). The
clause is **rejected rather than the arrow scan extended**: extending it would widen the resolver's
deliberately conservative false-positive tuning across every arrow in the corpus, where splitting
costs the author one full stop. The convention is one arrow per target — `Not X -> a. Not Y -> b.` —
already what every retrofitted `gitea-*` skill does in practice, now stated in
`skill-author`'s `references/contract.md` instead of being folklore.
**Dotted filenames in a boundary clause now parse.** `CLAUSE_BODY` — what may sit between `Not` and
the arrow — used to be `[^.;]`, a class that cannot cross a `.`, so every clause naming a dotted
filename between the two (`AGENTS.md`, `.vale.ini`, `.pre-commit-config.yaml`) was invisible to both
`BOUNDARY_ARROW` and `ARROW_BOUNDARY`. The two resulting failures were different sizes (**#110**):
- with a **backticked** target the clause was *misdiagnosed*. The backtick sweep still extracted the
target, so the route was checked, but the gate reported "no boundary clause" on a clause that was
present and working. That is the misdiagnosis the three rewordings above came from.
- with a **bare** target the clause was *unchecked*. `ARROW_BOUNDARY` is the only extractor for a
bare arrow target, so `Not AGENTS.md -> no-such-skill` produced no target, no dangling report and
no missing-clause SUGGESTION. Silence, not noise — the worse of the two.
`CLAUSE_BODY` is now `(?:[^.;]|\.(?=\S))`: a dot inside a filename is followed by a non-space, a
sentence-ending dot by whitespace or end of string, so the class crosses `AGENTS.md` and still stops
at a real sentence end. **Read the second bullet forward as well as back:** a bare target sitting
after a dotted filename is now extracted, resolved, and a blocking ERROR when it dangles, where the
same clause used to pass unchecked in silence.
### SUGGESTION-only checks
Three more, deterministic to measure but judgment to act on:
Deterministic to measure, judgment to act on:
- a description with **no boundary clause at all**;
- a description with **no boundary clause at all** (`absent`);
- an **arrow clause whose target could not be read** (`unparsed`);
- an **arrow clause naming more than one target**;
- a `## Gotchas` section with **more than five entries**;
- a `## Gotchas` section over **25% of the body**.
### Hand-invoked skills are exempt from the routing rules, and only those
A skill or agent whose frontmatter carries `disable-model-invocation: true` skips three checks:
- the boundary-clause check, `absent` and `unparsed` alike;
- the multi-target arrow check;
- the 250-character description **target** (`hand_invoked()` in `scripts/skill-size-check.sh`).
It keeps the 400-character description FAIL and **both** body word tiers, and if its description
does happen to name a target, that target is still resolved and can still dangle.
Why the exemption is right: `disable-model-invocation: true` removes the skill from the
model-visible listing entirely — it is not preloaded, and the Skill tool refuses to call it — so its
description is never matched against user intent. ADR-0020 and `skill-author`'s contract therefore
give such a skill **one plain human-facing sentence**: no trigger list, no boundary clause. No
validator knew the field existed (**#108**), so the boundary-clause SUGGESTION fired on exactly the
shape the contract mandates, and its remedy — "so the router knows where NOT to send this skill" —
was addressed to a router that cannot see the skill at all. An author who followed the advice made
the file worse. There is no router to inform.
The half that does **not** lift is the point. The body is still loaded on invocation and still
competes with the caller's live conversation, so neither body tier moves. The 400-character ceiling
stands too: a hand-invoked description is not preloaded, but it is still the one line the user reads
when choosing from the `/` menu, and that ceiling is an outlier stop rather than a routing-quality
budget — which is precisely why the 250-character target is the tier that lifts.
The field is read as a **boolean**, not as a mention of the key. PyYAML already resolves the
unquoted YAML 1.1 booleans, so the extra handling catches a quoted `"true"`, which a host reads as
truthy; `disable-model-invocation: false` is the model-invoked case written out longhand and buys
nothing. A frontmatter parse failure returns false rather than raising — the flag is a *modifier* on
other checks, and `description_value()` on the same text already reports the broken frontmatter, so
raising here would diagnose one file twice two different ways.
`caveman` and `zoom-out` are the two carriers here. `tests/test-skill-size-check.sh` pins both
halves — what the carve-out lifts, each with a flag-removed control, and what it must not.
### `verbose: true` is load-bearing
The hook is declared `verbose: true` so the SUGGESTION tier is audible. pre-commit prints nothing at
@@ -281,8 +441,10 @@ script.** `scripts/skill-size-check.sh` applies its body gate to whatever path i
bash scripts/skill-size-check.sh plugins/*/.apm/agents/*.agent.md
```
exits 1 today with 900-word body FAILs on `git-orchestrate` (933), `gitea-orchestrate` (1,199) and
`apm-orchestrate` (1,080). Agent files escape only because the hook definitions filter on `SKILL.md`
exits 1 today with 900-word body FAILs on `git-orchestrate` and `gitea-orchestrate`. (Counts are
deliberately not pinned here — agent bodies are edited like any other file, and a figure in this
paragraph goes stale the moment one is trimmed. Run the command.) Agent files escape only because
the hook definitions filter on `SKILL.md`
— a file-pattern accident that happens to implement the design, not the design itself. **Do not
"extend" that hook's `files:` pattern to cover agents** on the assumption that the script already
knows the difference; doing so silently enforces a gate ADR-0020 declines to set.
@@ -292,20 +454,39 @@ knows the difference; doing so silently enforces a gate ADR-0020 declines to set
**The ADR-0020 gates ship hot, with no baseline file.** A shrinking baseline recording each
non-compliant skill's current numbers was considered and rejected in favour of hot gates.
Two independent hot gates are currently red, and the first will not warn you about the second.
**The corpus is now clean on both gates.** Issue **#99** retrofitted all 39 skills plugin by plugin;
`kyberforge` was the last wave, after which the corpus was swept as a whole rather than per plugin.
Each sweep is followed by an **independent review round**: a fresh agent with no memory of the
retrofit re-measures the corpus and files what it finds, and the round repeats until one lands no
findings. The rounds are recorded as comments on **#99** — read the current state off that thread,
which is why no round count is pinned here.
| Gate | Current findings |
|---|---|
| `skill-size-check` | **26 of 39** descriptions and **9 of 39** bodies exceed their FAIL tier; 2 dangling targets; 58 SUGGESTIONs |
| `Kyberforge.CompositionNote` (Vale) | **10 errors across four skills**: `gitea-issues`, `gitea-labels-milestones`, `gitea-prs`, `gitea-workflow` |
| `skill-size-check` | **0 of 39** descriptions and **0 of 39** bodies exceed their FAIL tier; 0 dangling targets; SUGGESTIONs outstanding (count not pinned — see below) |
| `Kyberforge.CompositionNote` (Vale) | **0 errors** — the four `gitea-*` carriers were all retrofitted |
**The SUGGESTION count is deliberately not recorded here.** It moves with every skill edit *and*
with every change to the gate's own tiering, so any figure written down is stale by the next commit.
Measure it instead:
```
bash scripts/skill-size-check.sh plugins/*/.apm/skills/*/SKILL.md | grep -c '^SUGGESTION'
pre-commit run skill-size-check --all-files # same findings, via the hook
```
A non-zero count is the expected steady state, not a regression. SUGGESTIONs exit 0 and block
nothing; only the two FAIL tiers, the dangling-target ERROR and the missing-`references/` ERROR do.
Read the count as a work queue, and the FAIL columns above as the gate.
`Kyberforge.CompositionNote` is the ADR-0020 Vale rule banning composition and architecture prose
from a description. Every Vale rule here is `level: error` with no ignorable tier, so touching any of
those four skills means fixing its prose findings as well as its size findings.
from a description. Every Vale rule here is `level: error` with no ignorable tier, so a description
that reintroduces one blocks the commit even though no skill carries one today.
Consequence: editing a non-compliant skill *for any reason* means retrofitting it to the contract
first — a one-line fix to `gitea-prs` cannot be committed until that skill complies. This is
deliberate; it guarantees convergence and avoids a half-state. Tracked as Gitea issue **#99**.
Because nothing is grandfathered, the gates now bite on **first commit**: a new skill, or an edit
that pushes a description past 400 characters or a body past 900 words, is blocked until it
complies. That is the steady state the retrofit was for — it is no longer true that an unrelated
one-line fix to a skill requires retrofitting that skill first.
Check where a skill stands before starting, and check **both** gates:
@@ -434,6 +615,35 @@ passing one explicit file per invocation. The two manifests scope **differently
Narrowing a `.vale.ini` glob to a `plugins/`-shaped path to "tighten" it breaks the consumer case,
and `check-vale-style-sync`'s probe set is built to catch exactly that.
### The blind spot: `references/` is unlinted, for two independent reasons
Every `references/*.md` file in the corpus is outside the prose gate. Count them with
`git ls-files | grep -cE '^plugins/[^/]+/\.apm/skills/[^/]+/references/.*\.md$'` rather than reading
a figure here; it moves with every retrofit. This is the gap that matters most, because the context
contract's own remedy for an over-long body is to move prose **into** `references/` — the gate pushes
text across its own boundary and then stops watching it.
**Closing either cause alone changes nothing.** There are two, and they are independent:
| Cause | Where | Effect on a `references/` file |
|---|---|---|
| the `Kyberforge` style is scoped `[**/SKILL.md]` | `skill-audit/assets/vale/.vale.ini` | matches no section, so Vale lints 0 files and exits 0 |
| the hook's `files:` regex is `^plugins/[^/]+/\.apm/skills/[^/]+/SKILL\.md$` | `vale-audit-prefilter-skill` in `.pre-commit-config.yaml` | the file is never handed to Vale at all |
Verified both ways. Handing skill-audit's `vale-wrap.sh` a reference file directly — bypassing
pre-commit entirely, so only the style scope is in play — prints `0 errors … in 0 files` and exits 0,
where the same wrapper on a `SKILL.md` reports `in 1 file`. And the hook's `files:` regex, applied to
`git ls-files`, selects only the skill-directory `SKILL.md` files scoped at the top of this page, so
pre-commit never hands Vale a reference file to begin with. Widening the glob to `[**/*.md]` would
still lint nothing through the hook; widening the hook's `files:` alone would hand Vale files its own
config declines to match, which is the [0-file NOT RUN](#a-0-file-vale-run-is-not-run) shape — a
green run that measured nothing. **Issue #117** records the style-scope half; the hook half has to
land in the same change or the fix is cosmetic.
The consumer manifest is a third axis and does not rescue this either: `.pre-commit-hooks.yaml`'s
`(^|/)SKILL\.md$` is layout-agnostic but still filename-shaped, so an external repo running
`kyberforge-vale-audit-skill` has the same gap.
### `vale-wrap.sh`, never bare `vale`
Both audit skills' Step 1 and both pre-commit hooks call **each copy's own**