Agentic Skill Router

agentic-skill-router - Agentic Search-inspired skill routing and slimming

Use this skill when the user wants to inspect installed Agent Skills, identify unused or stale skills, disable or restore skills, or route a request to a locally disabled skill. For ordinary task requests, first use any enabled local Agent Skill that clearly matches; if none does, use this fallback router for skill-shaped requests involving named tools, APIs, services, CLIs, file formats, platforms, datasets, or domain workflows. The skill instructions are host-neutral; installation methods provide the host-specific plugin or slash-command entry point.

Locate the CLI

If references/local-cli.md exists, read it before any filesystem search and use the helper defined there; it is generated by agentic-skill-router init and pins the right local CLI path and host. Do not search the current project, package manager caches, or unrelated worktrees for another agentic-skill-router binary unless that generated helper path is missing or not executable.

When no generated local helper exists, prefer ${AGENTIC_SKILL_ROUTER_CLI} if it is set. Otherwise locate the bundled CLI next to this skill installation.

• Installed plugin: compute the plugin root by taking dirname three times from this SKILL.md path (.../skills/agentic-skill-router/SKILL.md -> plugin root), then append bin/agentic-skill-router.
• Repository checkout: only when this skill is being read inside the agentic-skill-router repository checkout itself, use bin/agentic-skill-router.

Always invoke the CLI by absolute path. Installed plugin wrappers set the host before delegating to the shared runtime. Repository checkout CLIs default to Claude Code. Define a helper for the resolved CLI path:

agentic_skill_router() { "<abs-path-to-agentic-skill-router>" "$@"; }

Manage skills

For cleanup requests, run:

agentic_skill_router suggest --json

Show suggestions as a compact table with id, reason, confidence, and details. Never disable without explicit user confirmation. After confirmation, disable specific ids or all current suggestions. The CLI requires --yes for every disable form; without it no skill files are renamed.

agentic_skill_router disable <id...> --yes
agentic_skill_router disable --all-suggested --yes

Use list --json for a full inventory, status --json for disabled records and repair status, and enable <id...> to restore previously disabled skills.

If the user wants to adjust the staleness threshold, mention --unused-for=60d (or 2w, 3m, 1y) or the persistent config at ~/.agentic-skill-router/config.json:

{ "unusedForDays": 60 }

Route disabled skills

Use this fallback router after enabled local Agent Skills have been considered and none clearly match a skill-shaped request: operating, querying, configuring, deploying, inspecting, or troubleshooting a named tool, API, service, dashboard, datastore, CLI, DSL, URL, file format, platform workflow, or domain method.

Use the agentic-skill-router corpus primitives as an Agentic Search-inspired, non-vectorized retrieval harness for skill management. Do not call route. Do not call dci or body. During retrieval, do not read disabled skill bodies. Route from disabled-skill metadata only. Do not assume embeddings, a vector database, or any hidden semantic index exists.

1. Build two term sets from the current user request:

   • must terms: 1-3 narrow terms that the correct skill should mention (file extensions, exact APIs/tools, named methods, protocols, or required operations).
   • probe terms: 2-5 additional distinctive terms for recall and ranking.

   Prefer exact technical terms over broad words like data, analysis, report, file, output, or json. For file-format tasks, include both the extension and artifact family when relevant, such as pptx plus presentation, or docx plus document.

2. Search disabled-skill metadata with a bounded, agent-controlled query:

   agentic_skill_router corpus search \
     --all "<must1>" --any "<probe1>" --any "<probe2>" --any "<probe3>" \
     --limit 30 --json
   

   The result reports totalMatches, returned, truncated, and stable ref values. Do not accept a truncated broad result as final evidence. Iterate for a small bounded number of searches (2-4 total) until the shortlist is useful: if totalMatches is 0, broaden or replace one must term; if truncated is true or totalMatches > 30, narrow with another --all term or more specific probes. Never dump the whole catalog.

3. Once the returned shortlist is small enough, compare the metadata evidence in the JSON result. If one candidate explicitly covers the required operation, choose it. If 2-3 candidates remain plausible, inspect only those metadata records:

   agentic_skill_router corpus inspect corpus-REF1 corpus-REF2 corpus-REF3 --json
   

4. Choose by metadata evidence:

   • Prefer explicit operation coverage over nearby topic similarity.
   • Prefer a dedicated file-format/tool skill when the task is to operate that file format or tool.
   • Prefer a domain/method skill when the named method/domain constraint is central and the file/tool is only the substrate.
   • For retrieve, extract, or structured-answer tasks, prefer metadata that mentions evidence, search, extraction, or structured output over broad discovery or planning.
   • If still tied, choose the metadata covering the most distinctive required verbs and nouns.

5. Record exactly one selected disabled skill, then read that skill file:

   agentic_skill_router corpus select "<corpus-ref-or-id>" \
     --query "<current user request>" \
     --confidence high \
     --reason "<brief metadata evidence>" \
     --json
   

   If the result has action: "read-skill-file" and a non-null selected, read selected.skillMdPath even when it ends in SKILL.md.agentic-skill-router-disabled, then follow that disabled skill's instructions as if it were enabled.

If metadata evidence remains weak or ambiguous, stop the router path and continue normally without selecting a disabled skill.

Safety

• Built-in and system skills are protected and cannot be disabled.
• The disable mechanism is a rename: SKILL.md to SKILL.md.agentic-skill-router-disabled. Never delete skill files.
• Never disable a skill without explicit user confirmation.
• Do not disable a whole plugin when a disabled skill still depends on that plugin's MCP tools or app tools.
• State is stored under ~/.agentic-skill-router/state-<host>.json.

References

• references/cli-location.md - CLI lookup details.
• references/slimming.md - listing, suggestions, disable, enable, and status.
• references/disabled-routing.md - L-agentic disabled-skill corpus workflow.
• references/safety.md - confirmation, protection, and repair rules.