vault-skill-factory

Vault Skill Factory

You turn a cluster of mature, curated wiki pages into a portable Agent Skill: a SKILL.md plus a references/ folder, written to a review directory for the human to inspect and (only if they choose) install. This is the inverse of wiki-capture: capture turns a conversation into a page; the factory turns a body of pages into a reusable skill.

Hard guardrails (read first)

• Never write into .skills/ and never run setup.sh or create symlinks into any global skill directory (~/.claude/skills, ~/.codex/skills, …). Generated skills go to the review dir only. Installation is a separate, explicit human decision.
• Never auto-install. End by telling the user where the skill is and how to install it project-locally if they want — do not do it for them.
• Source pages are trusted vault content, but do not invent capabilities: the generated skill must reflect what the pages actually say.

Before You Start

1. Resolve config (Config Resolution Protocol in llm-wiki/SKILL.md): get OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH, OBSIDIAN_WIKI_REPO, OBSIDIAN_LINK_FORMAT, the QMD vars, and:
   • SKILL_FACTORY_OUTPUT_DIR — where generated skills land. Default: $OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH/_generated-skills (a vault-level, underscore-prefixed excluded dir — like _raw/_staging/_sources, NOT the skills/ knowledge category). This co-locates generated skills with the vault they were distilled from. Create it if missing. Note: _generated-skills/ holds runtime Agent-Skill bundles (name + description frontmatter), not wiki pages — never write them into skills/ (that category is for knowledge pages and is graph-/lint-/index-tracked).
   • SKILL_FACTORY_MATURITY — comma list of lifecycle: values that count as "mature". Default: reviewed,verified. Pages with tier: core also qualify.
2. Read index.md to understand what the vault holds.

Step 1: Choose the cluster

Decide which pages become the skill. The user may name a topic, tag, or project; otherwise propose candidates.

1. Seed from the user's intent (a topic, tag, project, or a named page).
2. Expand the cluster:
   • If QMD is configured (QMD_WIKI_COLLECTION), run qmd query "<topic>" -c "$QMD_WIKI_COLLECTION" --files (or vsearch) to gather semantically related pages — this is the intended way to find the full cluster, not just exact-tag matches.
   • Otherwise Grep/Glob by tag and wikilink-neighbourhood (pages linked from the seed pages).
3. Filter by maturity: keep pages whose lifecycle: is in SKILL_FACTORY_MATURITY or whose tier: is core. Drop draft pages unless the user explicitly includes them.
4. Confirm the cluster with the user (list page names + count) before generating. If fewer than ~3 mature pages match, say so — a skill from one thin page isn't worth it; offer to proceed anyway or widen the net.

Step 2: Design the skill

From the cluster, decide:

• name — kebab-case, derived from the cluster's subject (e.g. french-theory-expert, peptide-protocols). Must not collide with an existing skill in .skills/.
• description — the trigger. Write it "pushy" (per skill-creator): state when to use it (all the phrasings a user might say) and what it does. This field is what makes the skill fire.
• Reasoning approach — how an agent should use this knowledge: the questions it answers, the method it applies, the caveats it respects. Distil this from the pages' synthesis, not a copy-paste.
• Depth material — which page bodies become references/ files.

Step 3: Write the skill to the review dir

Create $SKILL_FACTORY_OUTPUT_DIR/<name>/ with:

<name>/
├── SKILL.md            # frontmatter (name + pushy description) + reasoning approach + key knowledge
├── references/         # depth material distilled from the cluster
│   ├── <topic>.md      # one per sub-theme; declarative knowledge, not chat
│   └── sources.md      # provenance: which vault pages this was built from (+ their sources)
└── SKILL_FACTORY.md    # provenance manifest (see below) — NOT part of the installed skill

SKILL.md body should be lean (the trigger logic + a compact reasoning guide), pushing depth into references/. Follow the structure of existing skills in this repo. Preserve ^[inferred] / ^[ambiguous] markers when carrying over uncertain claims — a generated skill must not launder synthesis into fact.

references/sources.md lists every vault page used (by [[wikilink]]) and their upstream sources: — so the skill stays auditable back to the vault and original sources.

SKILL_FACTORY.md (factory metadata, kept out of the installable skill) records: generation date, the cluster pages + their lifecycle/tier, the maturity filter used, and the vault commit/hash if available. This lets a regenerate-on-update workflow diff later.

Optional, if the user asks: append/update a marketplace.json entry in the output dir (the OpenKB one-line-install convention) — still not an install, just a manifest.

Step 4: Optionally lean on skill-creator

skill-creator ships reusable scripts. Their path differs between a pip/uv install and a source checkout, so check both layouts under $OBSIDIAN_WIKI_REPO and use the first that exists:

• $OBSIDIAN_WIKI_REPO/skills/skill-creator/scripts/ — packaged install (OBSIDIAN_WIKI_REPO points at the bundled _data/ dir, which ships the skills under skills/).
• $OBSIDIAN_WIKI_REPO/.skills/skill-creator/scripts/ — source checkout.

Whichever resolves, it holds:

• improve_description.py — tighten the generated description for better triggering.
• package_skill.py — bundle the skill dir into a distributable archive.
• quick_validate.py — sanity-check the skill's structure.

Use them when the user wants a polished/validated artifact; don't reinvent them.

Step 5: Report — and stop

Tell the user:

• the path: $SKILL_FACTORY_OUTPUT_DIR/<name>/
• the cluster it was built from (page count + names)
• the trigger description
• How to install if they want it (their decision, project-local only):

  ln -s ../../.skills/<name> <repo>/.claude/skills/<name>   # after copying <name>/ into .skills/, sans SKILL_FACTORY.md
  Note explicitly: review first; do not run setup.sh (it fans skills into global dirs); never global-install without explicit agreement.

Do not install it yourself. Do not write to .skills/. Done.

Quality checklist

• Output went to $SKILL_FACTORY_OUTPUT_DIR, never .skills/ or a global dir
• Cluster confirmed with the user; only mature pages (per SKILL_FACTORY_MATURITY / tier: core)
• description is pushy and accurate (when + what)
• SKILL.md body is lean; depth lives in references/
• ^[inferred]/^[ambiguous] markers preserved; no synthesis laundered into fact
• references/sources.md traces back to vault pages + their sources
• SKILL_FACTORY.md provenance manifest present (excluded from the installable skill)
• Report names the path and the manual, project-local-only install step; nothing auto-installed