Skill Governance

Skill Governance

Govern the Skill surface the user actually experiences: the intended hot or router entries are fully visible in a fresh host, cold capabilities remain reachable, editable behavior has one canonical owner, and every retirement is recoverable. A smaller directory count is not the outcome.

Required outcome contract

Before acting, state in one sentence:

• which entries or routers must be model-visible;
• which capabilities must remain available cold;
• which layer the user authorized changing;
• what fresh-host evidence will prove success.

If the request is only “how many / what is loaded / why”, stay read-only.

System model

Never collapse these layers into one:

1. Canonical source — where owned behavior may be edited.
2. Installed inventory — bundles and versions that exist on disk.
3. Discovery policy — what Claude or Codex may discover.
4. Model-visible catalog — metadata in a fresh model prompt.
5. Runtime resources — hidden scripts, references, and assets a router still needs.

Installed does not mean active; active does not prove visible; visible does not prove usable. Counts and byte totals are diagnostic values only.

Authority order

Use current runtime truth, not remembered conventions:

• owned source repos and their manifests for editable Skill behavior;
• claude plugin ... --json for current Claude marketplace/install state;
• the explicit source-sync activation manifest for managed Daymade links;
• ~/.agents/skills as Codex's current user Skill root;
• exact-path ~/.codex/config.toml policy for Codex discovery disables;
• codex debug prompt-input for the actual fresh Codex catalog;
• the installed vendor bundle for third-party cold resources.

~/.codex/skills is legacy/system compatibility unless a current local contract explicitly assigns it another role. Never move third-party inventory into an owned-source activation manifest just to make ownership look complete.

Route the request

Read the named section of references/skill-surface-governance.md completely before using that workflow.

Fast read-only Codex audit

For a newly registered Skill whose local use is part of the delivery, run the target-name checks in references/skill-surface-governance.md §14 before calling it ready. This covers Claude's fresh command catalog and Codex's fresh prompt. The name must come from the requested delivery, not only the active whitelist.

Run from this Skill bundle:

python3 scripts/audit_codex_skill_surface.py --json

Only add policy the user or activation SSOT actually declared:

python3 scripts/audit_codex_skill_surface.py \
  --require-visible gstack-router \
  --json

The script compares codex debug prompt-input with the complete metadata parsed by Codex's own app-server skills/list, plus exact activation/discovery policy. Exit 0 is clean, 1 is pressure or drift to classify, and 2 means the evidence is invalid. It is read-only. Do not convert exit 1 into automatic pruning.

For a project's dual roots:

python3 scripts/audit_project_skill_roots.py <project-root> --json

That audit pairs direct child bundles by frontmatter name, recognizes only its explicit fail-visible compatibility-router contract, and distinguishes shared targets, identical copies, real drift, and invalid state.

Non-negotiable safety boundaries

• Drift checks are read-only. Config edits, link sync, installs, uninstalls, moves, cache repair, and marketplace source changes require authorization.
• Preserve Claude plugin scope. Verify replacements before retiring old identities.
• Never use direct cache copying as installation or source sync.
• Do not enforce “one cache version”. Current Claude Code owns orphan-version grace for running sessions; manual cache removal is exceptional repair only.
• Do not use blind marketplace remove-then-add. Removing the last scoped marketplace can uninstall its plugins.
• Read every candidate's unique instructions, scripts, references, and assets before calling it redundant. Old or short does not mean valueless.
• Keep cold third-party resources installed; hide only their exact discovery paths, then prove the router still resolves one representative capability.
• Retire by recoverable move plus file/executable/hash manifest, never by rm -rf.
• Existing sessions retain startup metadata. Restart before treating the interactive catalog as verification.

Source and activation ownership

For Daymade source-backed Codex activation, route to the current claude-switch-models-setup dry-run/apply workflow. Its explicit codex-active-skills.json owns only links created from declared source marketplaces. Do not reimplement its collision, symlink, or pruning logic here.

For Claude plugins, inspect current marketplace and install JSON, update or reinstall through the official CLI at the original scope, and independently read back the result. Treat cache folders as derived runtime artifacts.

For suite topology changes, use marketplace-dev to edit the source manifest; use this Skill only to reconcile already-landed migrations on the current host.

Definition of done

All applicable claims must be proven independently:

• canonical source and current owner are named;
• selected direct entries/routers appear in a fresh prompt under the requested discovery policy; report description truncation separately, including when the installation-only target gate passes;
• entries intended cold are absent from that catalog;
• one representative cold capability still resolves and works;
• source-backed links or Claude installs read back with the intended identity, source/version, and scope;
• any retired bundle and its recovery manifest still exist;
• unresolved ownership, host-version behavior, or deliberately retained exceptions are explicit.

Use the reference's task-behavior check only when actual task execution is part of delivery; catalog visibility alone does not prove that result.

Stop there. Do not create a new hook, manifest, report layer, or cleanup project unless the requested outcome still lacks evidence.