skill-registry

Activation Contract

Use this skill after installing, removing, creating, moving, or renaming skills, or when a delegator needs a fresh skill index.

Hard Rules

• The registry is an index, not a compiler or summary. SKILL.md remains the source of truth.
• Do not generate or inject compact rules by default; preserve author intent by passing exact skill paths to subagents.
• Always write .atl/skill-registry.md, whether or not Engram is available.
• Save the registry to Engram as topic_key: skill-registry when available, with capture_prompt: false.
• Generate the registry with gentle-ai skill-registry refresh --cwd <project>: it owns the scan order, deduplication, and the skills it never indexes. Scan by hand only when that command is unavailable.
• When scanning by hand, skip _shared and skill-registry; deduplicate by skill name, preferring project-level skills over user-level skills.
• Add .atl/ to .gitignore when possible unless explicitly disabled.

Decision Gates

Situation	Action
Same skill exists globally and in project	Keep the project-level skill
Same skill exists in multiple global locations	Keep the first source in scan order
No skills found	Write an empty registry so agents stop searching blindly
Agent will delegate work	Select matching registry rows and pass their SKILL.md paths

Execution Steps

1. Run gentle-ai skill-registry refresh --cwd <project> (add --force after skill changes); it writes .atl/skill-registry.md. If it reports the refresh was skipped (not a project), stop: there is no registry to persist. If it succeeds, go to step 4. If it fails, report the error instead of scanning by hand.
2. Only if the command is unavailable: scan all known user and project skill directories for */SKILL.md, reading frontmatter only as needed to extract name and description trigger text.
3. Render .atl/skill-registry.md with scanned sources, registry contract, skill name, trigger/description, scope, and exact path.
4. Persist to Engram when available using title: skill-registry, topic_key: skill-registry, type: config, and capture_prompt: false.
5. Return the registry path, skill count, cache status, and whether Engram was updated.

Output Contract

Return:

• Project name and .atl/skill-registry.md path.
• Number of indexed skills.
• Whether the cache was hit or regenerated.
• Any skipped or duplicate skills when relevant.

References

• docs/skill-style-guide.md — how skills should be authored before indexing.
• skills/_shared/skill-resolver.md — how delegators use the index.