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docs: retire the META.md guidance ADR-0022 overruled, bump touched plugins

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Why: ADR-0022 made `metadata.version` mandatory in SKILL.md frontmatter, but three documents still
instructed the opposite — that `version:`, `source:`, `references:` and `when:` belong in a separate
META.md. That recommendation was never implemented: META.md exists exactly once in this repo, inside
a vendored third-party research example, and all 39 skills now contradict it. A stale instruction
that outranks nothing is worse than no instruction, because an author following it undoes the ADR.

Implementation notes:
- Two LESSONS.md entries deleted outright — their entire payload was the rejected fix. Two kept and
  rewritten: the copy-fill entry loses only its META-TEMPLATE clause, and the `model:` entry keeps
  the provider-extension fact and the invocation-time boundary rule, which stand on their own.
- One factual error corrected in passing: the `extracted` slug entry claimed provenance is recorded
  in META.md. It lives in `references/sources.md` keyed by `source_keys:`, verified against
  validate-provenance.sh.
- Both docs/notes files gain `metadata.version` in their required-field lists. Deleting the stale
  paragraph while leaving those lists silent would have re-created the gap.
- `bin/write-docs` carried `metadata.version: "1.0"` — the only non-semver value in the corpus, and
  the result of relocating its old top-level `version:` without normalising it. Now `1.0.0`.
  ADR-0022 records the relocation it previously omitted, which issue #127 had asked it to decide.

Impact: patch bumps for the four plugins whose `.apm/` content changed — bin, git, gitea,
kyberforge. core and lint are untouched and stay put. Root apm.yml's `executables.allow` key and
marketplace package versions move in lockstep; the marketplace release version is unchanged.

Refs: #127
ADR: 0022
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EeH8SCbcrCAQrtymkNuhKP
This commit is contained in:
Defame1297
2026-09-09 05:15:41 +00:00
parent 3811f5481b
commit a3e721e937
10 changed files with 38 additions and 40 deletions
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LESSONS.md
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@@ -60,29 +60,21 @@ write-eval's process requires presenting the full test plan and waiting for user
The write-skill authoring standard required 8 body sections including Role and When/When not. These were assumed to be agentskills.io requirements. Checking the actual spec revealed the body has no format restrictions at all — recommended sections are step-by-step instructions, examples, and edge cases. Role and When/When not were added by convention without verifying the standard. Fix: before encoding any requirement as part of an authoring standard, check the upstream spec directly. The agentskills.io spec also confirmed that negative triggers belong in the description field — not in a separate body section — which eliminates a persistent duplication pattern across all skills.
## 2026-05-18 — Provenance fields in frontmatter are loaded on every skill scan
Fields like `source:`, `references:`, `version:`, `updated:`, and `when:` in SKILL.md frontmatter are loaded at agent startup alongside `name` and `description` for every installed skill. None of these are used for routing or runtime execution — they are audit and upgrade-cycle records. Loading them at startup violates progressive disclosure and wastes tokens proportional to the number of installed skills. Fix: move all non-routing frontmatter to a separate `META.md` file in the skill directory. Frontmatter keeps only `name`, `description`, `metadata.category`, and `allowed-tools` (when applicable) — the four fields the spec actually uses for routing and discovery.
## 2026-05-18 — Copy-fill is more deterministic than generate for structured skill artifacts
When a skill produces a structured artifact like SKILL.md, the natural approach is to generate it from internalized rules in the Process section. But this means section structure is only as reliable as the agent's instruction-following under token pressure. Copy-fill (copy the template to the target path, then fill in content) separates structure from content: the template mechanically enforces section order and presence, freeing the Process section to focus only on sequencing constraints (what order to decide things) rather than also policing structure. Side benefit: the template is a human-usable artifact that can be adopted independently of the skill. Fix applied in write-skill refactor: SKILL-TEMPLATE.md and META-TEMPLATE.md are the authoritative structure sources; the Process section no longer contains a body structure constraint — the template handles it.
When a skill produces a structured artifact like SKILL.md, the natural approach is to generate it from internalized rules in the Process section. But this means section structure is only as reliable as the agent's instruction-following under token pressure. Copy-fill (copy the template to the target path, then fill in content) separates structure from content: the template mechanically enforces section order and presence, freeing the Process section to focus only on sequencing constraints (what order to decide things) rather than also policing structure. Side benefit: the template is a human-usable artifact that can be adopted independently of the skill. Fix applied in write-skill refactor: SKILL-TEMPLATE.md is the authoritative structure source; the Process section no longer contains a body structure constraint — the template handles it.
## 2026-05-17 — HITL gap: agent delegates confirmation to permission system
The agent-level HITL rule ("require explicit confirmation before irreversible shared-state operations") is being bypassed: the agent calls the tool and lets the permission dialog catch it. This means the rule is not firing in agent reasoning — it's the permission system acting as a safety net. If a user selects "don't ask again," the net disappears. Fix: the HITL rule needs to be framed as "do not call the tool" rather than "ask before proceeding" — the agent must ask first, then act only after explicit confirmation.
## 2026-05-26 — META-TEMPLATE uses YAML comments; META.md output retains them
META-TEMPLATE.md uses YAML `#` comments to explain fields inline. SKILL-TEMPLATE.md uses HTML comments inside XML tags, which the agent strips on fill. The structural difference means SKILL.md output is clean but META.md output retains the explanatory `#` lines — an inconsistency. Fix (deferred): restructure META-TEMPLATE.md so all explanatory guidance is prose above the code block (markdown, never copied into the output YAML), and the code block itself uses `<placeholder>` syntax with no `#` comment lines. This makes META.md fill behaviour deterministic for the same reason SKILL.md fill is: `<...>` markers are unambiguously replaceable; prose above the block is not part of the template. Do not apply until the human/copy-fill tradeoff is resolved — see 2026-05-26 session discussion.
## 2026-05-26 — Overlap checks must scan the deployed directory, not just the source repo
`write-a-skill` existed only in `~/.agents/skills/` (installed from a pre-refactor source) and was invisible during a repo-level scan of `.agents/skills/`. Governance reviews and overlap checks that only look at the source repo will miss skills added by install.sh from other sources or prior runs. Fix: overlap checks must scan the deployed `~/.agents/skills/` directory, not just the repo's `.agents/skills/`.
## 2026-05-26 — `model:` field belongs in SKILL.md frontmatter, not META.md
## 2026-05-26 — `model:` field belongs in SKILL.md frontmatter, not a sidecar file
Claude Code supports `model:` as a provider extension in SKILL.md frontmatter — it overrides the session model for the skill's turn and reverts after. Attempting to put it in META.md was wrong: META.md is provenance/audit metadata, not runtime config. The boundary: if a field affects agent behaviour at invocation time, it belongs in SKILL.md frontmatter; if it serves upgrade reviews and audit trails, it belongs in META.md.
Claude Code supports `model:` as a provider extension in SKILL.md frontmatter — it overrides the session model for the skill's turn and reverts after. Attempting to move it out to a provenance sidecar was wrong: a sidecar is audit metadata, not runtime config. The boundary: if a field affects agent behaviour at invocation time, it belongs in SKILL.md frontmatter.
## 2026-05-26 — Research agents present synthesis as spec fact
@@ -126,7 +118,7 @@ Two forks independently fixed `references/sources.md` with different approaches
## 2026-06-28 — Implementation agents must invoke /skill-author, not write skill files directly
When briefing an agent to implement a new skill, the instinct is to tell it to write the SKILL.md and supporting files directly. This bypasses Step 5 of the skill-author process (provenance), which requires reading all research `sources.md` files and recording every `extracted` slug in META.md. The `validate-provenance.sh` script catches the gap — but only after the commit, requiring a fix round. This pattern recurred twice in one session (plugin-author and marketplace-author initial implementation, then again in the first round of fix agents). Fix: briefs for implementation agents must explicitly say "invoke `/skill-author` (read and follow `plugins/kyberforge/.apm/skills/skill-author/SKILL.md`)" — not "write the skill files." Invoking the skill is the only reliable way to ensure all process gates, including provenance, run.
When briefing an agent to implement a new skill, the instinct is to tell it to write the SKILL.md and supporting files directly. This bypasses Step 5 of the skill-author process (provenance), which requires reading all research `sources.md` files and recording every `extracted` slug in the skill's own `references/sources.md`. The `validate-provenance.sh` script catches the gap — but only after the commit, requiring a fix round. This pattern recurred twice in one session (plugin-author and marketplace-author initial implementation, then again in the first round of fix agents). Fix: briefs for implementation agents must explicitly say "invoke `/skill-author` (read and follow `plugins/kyberforge/.apm/skills/skill-author/SKILL.md`)" — not "write the skill files." Invoking the skill is the only reliable way to ensure all process gates, including provenance, run.
## 2026-07-05 — Repo root is a bare checkout; work happens in worktrees only