# Sks Curate > Use when updating, improving, compressing, or token-optimizing a skill in the shikanime-labs/skills catalog: rework the body, tighten it, refresh evals, and keep it loadable. - Skill: `shikanime-labs/sks-curate` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add shikanime-labs/sks-curate` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/shikanime-labs/sks-curate/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - License: Apache-2.0 - Author: shikanime-labs (https://skillmd.com/u/shikanime-labs) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/shikanime-labs/sks-curate --- # Shikanime Org Skill Curation Refine an existing skill in the catalog: improve its guidance, compress it to a lean token budget, and keep its evals honest. Curation is a rework pass, not a rewrite from scratch — the skill already encodes proven procedure; your job is to make that procedure sharper and cheaper to load. ## When to Use - "Improve / tighten / compress ." - "Make more token-efficient." - "Update after the workflow it describes changed." - "Curate the catalog before shipping the next batch of skills." - A review found the skill wordy, redundant, or drifting from the procedure. Don't use for authoring a brand-new skill (`sks-skill-authoring`); curation starts from an existing `SKILL.md`. ## How a skill earns its keep A skill loads into a context budget; every token it costs should earn its place. Four properties decide whether a body is worth its weight: 1. **Grounding** — the steps are distilled from a real execution (a task you actually ran, corrections you made, the input/output formats you hit), not generic advice. If a section could apply to any repo, it is not grounded. 2. **Gap-filling** — it adds exactly what the agent lacks: project conventions, non-obvious edge cases, exact commands. It omits what the agent already knows (how git works, what a PR is). 3. **Decisiveness** — one default tool/approach per decision. Alternatives are an escape hatch, not a menu. 4. **Self-sufficiency** — templates for fixed output formats, checklists for multi-step flows, validation loops (do → check → fix → repeat) for fragile or destructive operations. ## Curation procedure 1. **Scope.** Confirm the target skill exists and read its current `SKILL.md`, `evals/evals.json`, `.skillignore`, and any `references/`. Record a baseline: `wc -l SKILL.md`, a token estimate, and the evals assertion list. You cannot judge compression without a number to beat. 2. **Decide the operation.** From the baseline and the trigger, pick one: - **Improve** — the procedure is right but guidance is thin: add gotchas, exact commands, a template, a checklist. Expect the body to grow, then re-compress the rest to hold the budget. - **Compress** — the body is over budget, wordy, or padded with what the agent already knows: cut prose, merge duplicate phases, prefer tables and lists over sentences, delete content that repeats `related_skills`. - **Update** — the workflow it describes changed: revise commands, gates, and pitfalls; reconcile the `## When to Use` triggers. 3. **Apply the distillation pass.** Rework the body against the four properties above and the compression checklist below. Use progressive disclosure: keep `SKILL.md` under ~500 lines / ~5,000 tokens and push reference detail into `references/` with an explicit load condition ("read `references/api-errors.md` when the API returns a non-200"), never a generic "see references/". 4. **Refresh `evals/evals.json`.** The assertions must stay self-consistent with the new body. Re-run the assertions programmatically (case-insensitive for prose checks); assert scope behavior, not the absence of a string that legitimately appears (a skill's own name, its `related_skills`). Update `expected_output` for any prompt whose behavior you changed. 5. **Validate.** JSON-parse both manifests touched, run the evals assertions, and wrap markdown at 80 columns (MD013). Prefer `nix develop -c nix fmt` (full formatter set); a bare `nix fmt` outside the devenv skips rumdl-check. **Also run `rumdl` directly** over every file you touched, including each `references/` file you created or extracted (`uvx rumdl check `). CI runs `rumdl-check` across the whole tree; a locally-absent `rumdl` binary makes `treefmt` skip it silently and the failure only surfaces after push. Confirm the frontmatter `name` still matches the directory and the description is still an imperative `Use when …` under 200 characters. 6. **Report the delta.** State lines and tokens before/after, what you cut or added, and whether the evals changed. "Compressed" is a claim — prove it with the numbers. ## Compression checklist Delete or rewrite anything that matches: - **Restating the obvious** — how git/PRs/`gh` work, generic repo hygiene. - **Repeating a sibling skill** — content already owned by a `related_skills` entry (say "see `sks-commit`", don't re-teach it). - **Two ways to do one thing** — keep the default, drop the alternatives (unless a fallback is genuinely load-bearing). - **Prose that a table or list carries** — one row beats three sentences. - **Orphan references** — `references/` files nothing loads; either add the explicit load condition or delete them. - **Stale versions/gates** — commands or rules the workflow no longer uses. Compression is bounded by clarity: a one-line answer the reader cannot act on is not cheaper, it is broken. When a choice cuts a real corner, leave a note naming the ceiling and the upgrade path. ## Gotchas - **Description drift.** After a big rework the description may no longer match the body; keep it a 200-char imperative that names the real triggers, or the skill stops firing when it should. - **Evals rot with the body.** The most common curation failure is editing the body and leaving assertions that now fail or assert stale behavior. Refresh them in the same pass, in the same commit. - **Budget is per-load, not per-edit.** A skill can grow when improving; the budget is the final body. Improve-then-compress so the result lands lean. - **Don't break the trigger by over-tightening.** Cutting the description to save tokens can strip the `Use when` contexts; keep at least the imperative and the primary context. - **Compression ≠ deletion of safety.** Never remove the validation loops, input checks, or gate steps that prevent data loss or broken landings — those keep the skill safe, not fluffy. - **Extracted files are linted too.** When you move a block into `references/`, CI runs `rumdl-check` (MD032/MD013) over those files as well as `SKILL.md`. A `MD032` (list must be preceded by a blank line) in a freshly written reference file is the most common miss — `uvx rumdl check` catches it before the push, a missing local `rumdl` binary does not. - **Orphan reference = create, don't delete.** If the body points at `references/.md` that does not exist, the author intended progressive disclosure — create `.md` with the extracted content and keep the load-on-demand pointer. Deleting the pointer loses the documented detail; creating preserves it. - **Run the ponytail ladder on the body itself.** Before adding guidance, check rung 2 (already in a sibling skill / reference?) — extraction beats duplication, and the compression checklist above is the ladder applied to prose. `ponytail-review` finds the bloat; this skill removes it. For a whole-repo bloat pass, `ponytail-audit` is the analog of this skill's structural audit. - **The local `.hermes/skills` mirror drifts ahead of the repo.** Verified 2026-09-08: the local `sks-dev-workflow` mirror was 1,559 lines against the repo twin's 344 — months of session learnings accumulated only in the operational clone. When curating, DIFF BOTH CLONES first and consolidate the mirror's learnings into the repo (body or `references/`); otherwise the next `hermes skills update` silently deletes them. - **Curate in a worktree, never `cp` over it.** When the user's tree is dirty, check the PR commit out in a fresh `git worktree` and edit there. Never copy the user's on-disk (possibly already-edited) file over the worktree's pristine PR file — that clobbers the base and produces a bogus diff. If you must move state, `git stash` the user's files, then `git checkout --` in the worktree to restore its pristine base before porting fixes. ## Verification ```bash wc -l SKILL.md # budget check nix develop -c nix fmt # treefmt incl. rumdl-check (MD013) uvx rumdl check . # markdown lint over SKILL.md + references/ (MD032/MD013) # — catches what a missing local rumdl binary hides # evals assertions pass, run programmatically (case-insensitive for prose) ``` Done when the body is within budget, evals pass and match the body, the description still triggers, and the before/after delta is stated in numbers. ## See also - `sks-update` — orchestrates curation → dev-workflow → local resync. - `sks-skill-authoring` — authoring a new skill (curation starts from an existing one). - `sks-dev-workflow` — the loop curation changes ship through. - `sks-pr-review` — review lens that often flags skills worth curating. - `ponytail-review` — over-engineering-only pass over a diff. - `ponytail-audit` — same lens, whole repo; template for the structural audit step. ## Repo-specific curation notes (verified) - `skills` repo commits: plain capitalized title + labeled body (`Design:`/`Related:`) + `Signed-off-by: Shikanime Deva ` + `Co-authored-by: Automata ` — landed commits (2026-09-03) carry both trailers.