docs: amend ADR-0020 and correct the gate reference to match what ships

The ADR said a /slash target behind a route verb takes the follower test; the
implementation decides notation first and skips it. Recorded as a dated amendment
rather than a silent edit, per the ADR-0016/0017 convention.

Its Enforcement table called itself exhaustive 'because the failure this ADR is
most exposed to is a rule filed under Enforcement that no validator implements'.
Three shipped behaviours were missing, including the disable-model-invocation
carve-out that removes two rows. Also de-pins the 'zoom-out is the one carrier'
claim, which caveman falsified, and the stale dangling-target statuses.

gates.md's ERROR row made terminality a conjunct for route notation, telling an
author a form is safe that exits 1. It now documents the references/ Vale blind
spot and its two independent causes -- AGENTS.md trimmed to the operative rule
per the split gates.md itself states -- plus the undocumented skill-frontmatter
hook and the second scope exclusion. CONTEXT.md glosses 'routing target'.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EJJrm5YmacbwMdzZpXcoti
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-31 19:47:04 +00:00
parent 4011d149bc
commit 971e148e19
4 changed files with 194 additions and 23 deletions

View File

@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ Fall back to raw shell only when no skill covers it.
- **Do not add repo-owned keys to `.claude/settings.json`.** apm treats it as its own deployed artifact and `apm audit --ci` replays the install and diffs, so anything apm would not have written is permanent drift that fails the `apm-audit-ci` pre-push hook. A hook you want here is authored in `plugins/<name>/.apm/hooks/` and deployed by apm, never hand-written into that file. The `SessionStart` entry already in it is exactly that: kyberforge authors it in `plugins/kyberforge/.apm/hooks/hooks.json` and apm merges it in, so it is apm's own output, it is what the replay expects, and it belongs in the commit — do not strip it (ADR-0019). Machine-specific settings go in the gitignored `.claude/settings.local.json`; shared enforcement goes in `.pre-commit-config.yaml`.
- **`apm.lock.yaml` turning up modified is expected, not a bug.** kyberforge's `SessionStart` hook runs `apm outdated` at startup and `apm update --yes` when something is behind, which rewrites the lock. Commit or discard it deliberately.
- **A `.apm/` edit is not live in this session until it is pushed.** The six dependencies resolve from the holocron remote, unpinned against the default branch. `apm install` deploys from the lock; `apm update` is what re-resolves refs.
- **The ADR-0020 skill gates ship hot, with no baseline — and the corpus is now clean.** All 39 skills clear both FAIL tiers: no description over 400 characters, no body over 900 words (counted body-only). Retrofitted plugin by plugin under #99 (see `docs/spec/gates.md`). Because nothing is grandfathered, the gates now bite on first commit — a new skill, or an edit that pushes a description past 400, is blocked until it complies. **No routing target dangles**, and `tests/test-adr0020-targets.sh` pins that set as empty, so a new boundary clause naming a non-existent skill fails the suite rather than joining a backlog. Two blind spots survive: `skill-size-check` does not cover the Vale half, so `Kyberforge.CompositionNote` fires nowhere today but any new description can reintroduce it; and every `references/` file is unlinted — which matters because the contract's own remedy is to move prose *into* `references/`, out of the prose gate's reach. That blind spot has **two** independent causes and closing either alone changes nothing: the `Kyberforge` style is scoped `[**/SKILL.md]` (the cause #117 records), *and* the `vale-audit-prefilter-skill` hook filters on `files: '^plugins/[^/]+/\.apm/skills/[^/]+/SKILL\.md$'`, so a reference file is never handed to Vale whatever the style says. Check both gates: `pre-commit run --all-files`.
- **The ADR-0020 skill gates ship hot, with no baseline — and the corpus is now clean.** All 39 skills clear both FAIL tiers: no description over 400 characters, no body over 900 words (counted body-only). Retrofitted plugin by plugin under #99 (see `docs/spec/gates.md`). Because nothing is grandfathered, the gates now bite on first commit — a new skill, or an edit that pushes a description past 400, is blocked until it complies. **No routing target dangles**, and `tests/test-adr0020-targets.sh` pins that set as empty, so a new boundary clause naming a non-existent skill fails the suite rather than joining a backlog. Two blind spots survive: `skill-size-check` does not cover the Vale half, so `Kyberforge.CompositionNote` fires nowhere today but any new description can reintroduce it; and no `references/` file is linted by anything, so prose relocated out of a body to satisfy the word gate lands outside the prose gate. It has two independent causes and closing either alone changes nothing — `docs/spec/gates.md` has both, issue #117 tracks it. Check both gates: `pre-commit run --all-files`.
- **Run `bash tests/run-tests.sh --strict` before considering any change done.** Keep the flag: without it a suite whose dependency is missing exits 77 and is counted SKIPPED rather than failed, so the run goes green having verified less than it claims.
- **Before pushing, rehearse the gate locally:** `pre-commit run --hook-stage pre-push --all-files`. It runs the 14 pre-push hooks this repo authors itself plus pre-commit's 2 `meta` hooks, so it prints 16; `check-release-needed` passes without checking anything, because it needs a real push to `main`. `docs/spec/gates.md` reconciles both.
- **Pushing without a network** needs `SKIP=apm-marketplace-check,apm-pack-check-clean git push` — those two resolve a remote marketplace entry via `git ls-remote`. Skip only those two; the rest are real local checks, and adding one to `SKIP` disarms it silently.

View File

@@ -26,6 +26,14 @@ trigger clause, at most one capability clause, and a boundary clause, and nothin
and the target-resolution walk: `docs/spec/gates.md`.
_Avoid_: skill budget, size limit
**Routing target**:
The skill or agent name a boundary clause sends work to. It **resolves** when a skill or agent of
that name is reachable from the file being checked, and **dangles** when none is — a route the router
cannot take. Dangling is a blocking ERROR in route notation (`/name`, `→ name`) and a SUGGESTION for
a bare name nothing else in the sentence corroborates. Verdicts and the resolution walk:
`docs/spec/gates.md`.
_Avoid_: route, pointer, cross-reference
**Dispatch body**:
The body pattern a skill with two or more mutually exclusive flows must use — the body carries only
the dispatch table and the gates common to every branch, and each flow lives in its own

View File

@@ -203,8 +203,14 @@ 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 +225,13 @@ 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 +242,13 @@ 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 (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) | 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 +265,21 @@ 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 +290,8 @@ 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 +323,46 @@ 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
@@ -342,8 +409,8 @@ 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 +420,24 @@ 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

View File

@@ -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; a bare `-> name` only when the name is hyphenated, a backticked `` -> `name` `` for any — 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
@@ -149,6 +195,17 @@ 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.
**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.
@@ -558,6 +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**