Skillex Skill Registry

Skillex Skill Registry

Registry-operations hub for ~/code/skillex. Everything here is about which skills exist, where they live, how they are bundled into packs, and how a manifest turns that into a projection on disk — never about what a SKILL.md says.

The generic SSOT fan-out ENGINE (master→dialect propagation, lock files, drift gates, and the mechanics of sync.py / sync-skills.py as a fan-out pattern) belongs to agent-config-fanout; its references/skill-packs.md is the engine-side view of the same contract. This skill is the operator's view: run the registry, cut packs, fix broken manifests.

Routing

Operating Principles

• Three roles, one catalog. packs/ are SOURCES, sets/ are SELECTIONS, all-skills/ is the CATALOG. Confusing them is the root of most registry damage.
• Never edit a repo's .mise/scripts/*.py. Those are byte-compared against the pjangler CommonProject template. Edit the template, propagate, re-audit.
• Resolution is offline by construction. pj audit and skillex pack manifest NEVER clone or fetch. Only sync-skills.py may clone, and only when no checkout exists at all.
• Sealing is opt-in and one-way. A manifest may TIGHTEN a pack's seal, never loosen it.
• Symlinks are never pack content. A pack member must be a real directory holding a regular SKILL.md. Symlink-composed trees are skill-sets, not packs.
• Verify before you trust GREEN. A pack can resolve, pass, and still be the wrong copy on disk. Always print the resolved root.

Topology in one screen

~/code/skillex/                      git@github.com:delorenj/skillex.git
├── all-skills/<name>/SKILL.md       CATALOG — one real dir per skill, the SSoT
├── sets/<set>/<name>                SELECTIONS — symlinks into all-skills/ (or 33GOD/skills/)
├── packs/<name>/pack.toml           SOURCE — flat pack
├── packs/<name>/<version>/          SOURCE — versioned pack (pack.toml + SHA256SUMS)
└── skills.schema.json               canonical $schema target

Consumers:

~/.agents/skills.json                GLOBAL manifest      → --scope global
<repo>/.agents/skills.json           PROJECT manifest     → --scope project
<repo>/.agents/skills/<name>         pack projection written by provision-packs.py
<home|repo>/<cli>/skills/<name>      symlinks written by sync-skills.py (six CLIs)

Command surface

Read-only commands marked ✅ were executed and their output confirmed. Commands marked ⚠️ mutate state and were NOT executed — read the implementation before relying on them. Commands marked ❌ do not work on the pj currently on PATH.

# --- registry side (run from ~/code/skillex) — all read-only ---
uv run skillex pack list                                  # ✅ every pack root + version
uv run skillex pack verify packs/bmad/6.10.2              # ✅ contract check; exit 1 on error
uv run skillex pack verify packs/hermes-base/0.18.2 --sealed   # ✅ 14 SKILL_MD_MISSING + SUMS_MISSING, exit 1
uv run skillex pack render packs/<name>/<ver> --name <name> --version <ver> --check   # ✅ --check writes nothing
uv run skillex pack render …                              # ⚠️ WITHOUT --check this WRITES pack.toml + SHA256SUMS
uv run skillex pack manifest <repo>/.agents/skills.json --verify   # ✅ resolve packs[] offline

# --- project side — ALL of these mutate the repo; none were executed here ---
python3 .mise/scripts/provision-packs.py                  # ⚠️ materializes packs into .agents/skills/
python3 .mise/scripts/sync-skills.py --scope project      # ⚠️ writes/removes symlinks in six CLI dirs
python3 .mise/scripts/sync-skills.py --scope global       # ⚠️ same, under $HOME
python3 .mise/scripts/sync-skills.py --scope project --prune-retired   # ⚠️ DELETES retired CLI dirs
mise run skills-sync                                      # ⚠️ runs skills-provision-packs, then the sync

# --- parity side: use the REPO BUILD, the pj on PATH is stale ---
alias pjr='node /home/delorenj/code/33GOD/pjangler/dist/index.js'
pjr audit                                                 # ✅ read-only, verified
pj audit                                                  # ❌ stale build — invents pre-pack-era failures
pjr migrate skills.project-manifest --dry-run             # ✅ read-only, verified
pjr migrate skills.project-manifest --accept-registry-matches   # ⚠️ REWRITES the manifest
pj migrate … --accept-registry-matches                    # ❌ flag absent from the installed pj

The pj on PATH is a stale publish. It has zero occurrences of accept-registry-matches and zero of the pack-era audit detail strings, yet reports the same version (1.2.25) as the repo build. Every pj invocation in this skill means the repo build. See gotchas.

skillex pack render --help and skillex pack verify --help crash (exit 1) — see gotchas. Read the flags from pack-authoring.md instead.

Decision tree: which lever do I pull?

Want a skill available everywhere?
├─ It is one skill, hand-maintained      → add to `skills[]` in ~/.agents/skills.json
├─ It is a coherent bundle you ship      → cut a pack, declare it in `packs[]`
└─ It is a curated loadout of existing
   catalog skills                        → sets/<set>/ symlinks (NOT a pack)

A declared pack is not showing up?
├─ Does it resolve?                      → `skillex pack manifest … --verify` (prints the root)
├─ Does it verify?                       → `skillex pack verify <root>`
├─ Did it get projected?                 → ls <repo>/.agents/skills/<name>
└─ Did it get fanned out?                → ls <repo>/.claude/skills/<name>

`pj audit` fails on skills.project-manifest?
└─ → references/pjangler-integration.md (each detail string maps to one check)

Cross-cutting rules

1. The manifest precedence order is global packs[] → global skills[] → project packs[] → project skills[], but §6 redundancy pruning runs FIRST. A skills[] entry a declared pack already provides is redundant, not an override — it is dropped, and the pack member wins. Only entries that SURVIVE pruning override pack members. Getting this backwards was a shipped bug. Full rules and a live worked example: manifest.md.
2. Redundancy is scoped to ONE manifest. A project skills[] entry is weighed only against packs declared in the project manifest, never against global packs.
3. packs/<name>/ is a family, not an extent. packs/bmad/6.10.2 and packs/bmad/6.10.1-next.31 are different packs. Only names in the resolved pack's DECLARED inventory are shadowed across sibling versions.
4. The registry-root ladder is PJ_SKILLS_REGISTRY_ROOT → ~/.agents/.cache/registries/<sanitized-url> → ~/code/skillex, where <sanitized-url> is re.sub(r"[^a-zA-Z0-9]", "_", url). Three surfaces compute that name and must agree byte-for-byte.
5. ~/.hermes/skills is a writable Hermes runtime OVERLAY. It is never written, never reported, never pruned — it is excluded from the prune walk entirely.
6. $schema is https://raw.githubusercontent.com/delorenj/skillex/main/skills.schema.json. The old .../skillex/schemas/main/... URL 404s; it is accepted on read, reported by audit, rewritten by migrate.
7. Every registry mutation is followed by a verify. skillex pack render then skillex pack verify; pj migrate then pj audit.

Out of scope

• Generic SSOT config fan-out engine mechanics — hooks.master.json, dialect mappings, hooks.mappings.lock.json, generated-config drift gates → agent-config-fanout.
• Authoring SKILL.md content — topology (standalone/member/hub), references/ taxonomy, description keyword density, gotcha prose style → skill-creator.
• Developing pjangler itself — Commands, Recipes, the CLI/MCP server, template authoring → project-jangler.
• Bootstrapping a 33god project — pj init, .project.json, Hermes PM provisioning, adoption checklists → 33god-projects.
• Simplifying .gitignore or reconciling already-tracked ignored paths — resolve the effective ignore stack, review provenance, and perform explicit index cleanup → gitignore-maintenance.
• Hermes fleet operations — ~/.hermes/fleet.env, config.yaml skills.external_dirs, systemd units, and what lives inside the ~/.hermes/skills overlay → 33god-agent-fleet-operations.
• mise task syntax in general → mise-tasks; version parity across many files → mise-versioning.