Bring in a skill

Principles in play: Control transitions.TRACEControl transitions

A skill someone else wrote enters your project as an input, and once adopted it becomes a standing instruction that applies to later tasks by default. The records name which bytes entered, from where, and on whose words.

Steps

1. Look before adopting.

   Say to your agent

   List the skills in that repository, and show me every file of the literature-review one.

   Nothing is written to your project yet.

2. Say yes to what you saw.

   Say to your agent

   Yes, adopt it exactly as you showed me.

   Your agent applies only those bytes and records their admission in an intake row, with your words.

3. Commit, then link the adoption.

   Say to your agent

   Commit the adoption, then record it as a default adoption.

   The link records a default-adoption row in sources/transitions.jsonl, joined to that commit.

4. Later, check for updates.

   Say to your agent

   Where do my skills stand, and is any of them behind its source?

   An update is shown in full and needs your yes again; a copy you adapted is never merged for you.

Things to know

• A package is read as data. The tool never runs, imports or checks out a file from it, and never commits or pushes.
• Sharing is your decision. If the source is not known to be public, the skill enters only once you say it may be shared with everyone who can read the project.
• The inventory in ai/SKILLS-IN-USE.md is written by the tool. Do not edit that section by hand.

What the agent runs

python scripts/trace_skills.py list <repository> [--ref <branch, tag or commit>]
python scripts/trace_skills.py show <repository> <path> [--ref <branch, tag or commit>]
python scripts/trace_skills.py adopt <repository> <path> --candidate <candidate.json> \
  --by "Full Name" --words "the person's words" --authority "T3 of ai/records/<id>" --yes
python scripts/trace_skills.py link .trace-os/skill-adoptions/<operation id>.json --commit <sha>
python scripts/trace_skills.py status [--offline]
python scripts/trace_skills.py update <name> [--ref <branch, tag or commit>]
python scripts/trace_skills.py retire <name> [--drop-base]
python scripts/trace_skills.py declare <name> --held-by "Full Name"   # a skill you run from your own setup