Skillbun

/skillbun -- Skill Bundler

The Agent Skills spec defines single skills. A skill that depends on another (skillize needs skill-creator's eval tooling) has no way to declare or distribute that dependency. skillbun closes this gap: resolve deps, rename to avoid collisions, validate, bundle, ship.

Process

1. Identify targets

Accept one or more skill paths or names (full flag set under Usage). For each target, verify SKILL.md exists and validate: frontmatter has name and description, name matches directory, kebab-case.

2. Resolve dependencies

Scan each skill's SKILL.md and reference files for inter-skill references. Detection heuristics:

Explicit (high confidence):

• "read the skill-creator SKILL.md" or similar
• References to paths containing another skill's name
• "follow skill-creator's section on X"

Implicit (medium confidence):

• "use /other-skill" or "invoke /other-skill"
• References to scripts/agents/assets in another skill's directory

System (note in manifest, don't bundle):

• compatibility field requirements (git, python, docker)

Build a dependency graph. Check for cycles. Present for confirmation:

skillize
  └── skill-creator (eval pipeline, scripts, agents)

2 skills, 0 cycles
Bundle? [Y/n]

3. Rename for distribution

Skills bundled from third-party sources should be renamed to avoid collision with independently installed copies. The rename must be consistent across three places:

1. Directory name: skill-creator/ -> ant-skill-creator/
2. Frontmatter name: field: must match the new directory name
3. References in other skills: update any SKILL.md text that points to the old name

Naming convention for renamed skills:

• Prefix with a short namespace: ant- (Anthropic), oai- (OpenAI), or the author's handle
• Keep the original name recognizable after the prefix

Ask the user to confirm the rename mapping before applying:

Rename for bundling:
  skill-creator -> ant-skill-creator

Apply? [Y/n]

Skip rename when:

• The skill is the user's own (no collision risk)
• The user explicitly says --no-rename

4. Collect and stage

For each skill in the resolved graph:

1. Locate the skill directory. Search order:
   • Path provided by user
   • Current project .claude/skills/ or .agents/skills/
   • User-scope skill directories
2. Copy to a staging directory as top-level siblings:

   <staging>/
   ├── skillize/
   └── ant-skill-creator/
   

3. Apply renames (directory + frontmatter name: field)
4. Update cross-references in SKILL.md files to use new names
5. Strip build artifacts: __pycache__/, node_modules/, .DS_Store, *.pyc, evals/, *-workspace/, .git/

5. Package

Output as .skill (zip). Multiple skill directories in one archive:

cd <staging>
zip -rq <bundle-name>.skill skill-a/ skill-b/

The .skill extension is a standard zip. Platforms that accept .skill files will extract the contents. Each top-level directory is a valid skill with its own SKILL.md.

Alternative: .zip extension for environments that don't recognize .skill. Same contents, different extension.

6. Verify

After packaging, verify:

1. Each skill directory has valid SKILL.md
2. Every name: field matches its directory name
3. No stale cross-references to old (pre-rename) names
4. No personal paths, container-specific references, or secrets
5. Archive extracts cleanly

Present a summary:

skillize.skill (81 KB)
  skillize/            (2 files, 12 KB)
  ant-skill-creator/   (18 files, 128 KB)

Anti-patterns

• Name collision: Bundling skill-creator without renaming it will overwrite the user's independently installed copy on extract. Always rename third-party skills.

• Stale references: Renaming the directory but not updating name: in frontmatter, or not updating references in dependent skills. All three must be consistent.

• Bundling everything: Only include actual dependencies, not every installed skill.

• Personal paths: Scrub container-specific paths, usernames, and environment-specific references before bundling.

• Missing validation: Every skill must pass validation. A bundle with an invalid skill installs broken tools silently.

Usage

/skillbun <skill> [skill...]     # bundle named skills + deps
/skillbun --all                  # bundle all skills in current root
/skillbun --from <dir>           # bundle from specific directory
/skillbun --dry                  # show dep graph + renames, don't package
/skillbun --no-deps              # skip dependency resolution
/skillbun --no-rename            # skip rename step

References