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Concept: Skill lifecycle — view & edit skill content after creation (every scenario, incl. imported skills) #397

Description

@iret77

Part of epic #391 (skill import + skill-aware Builder). Split out for separate
tracking. Applies to skills created any way — imported, pasted, or authored live in
the Builder chat — and to the onboarding offer (#396), where imported skills especially
must not be frozen.

Summary

However a skill was created, its content must stay viewable and editable afterwards,
through one consistent editor, everywhere a skill appears. Today that is only partly true.
This issue captures the gaps and proposes the missing functions and UI.

This is a concept, not an implementation plan.

Why

A skill is long-lived: it gets refined, corrected, and reused across agents. If a user can
create a skill but not later open and change it — or can only edit some skills, in one
place — the skill stops being a durable, trustable asset. This holds for every creation
path in epic #391 (import, paste, live authoring) and for the onboarding import offer
(#396).

Current state (verified gaps)

  • The admin node-graph Builder already has a per-node inspector that edits a skill's
    name and body — but it covers only host-authored skills. An imported
    (source: file) skill is read-only
    there and cannot be edited.
  • There is no central place to manage skills: no screen to list every skill, read its
    frontmatter + body, see which agents use it, edit, delete, or export. Skills are only
    reachable as nodes on a canvas.
  • The conversational (spec/slot) Builder — the surface where the size pain happens —
    has no skill view/edit affordance at all. A skill just authored or attached there
    cannot be inspected without switching to the node-graph builder.

Proposed

  • One skill content editor (frontmatter + body) reused everywhere a skill appears — the
    node-graph inspector, the conversational Builder, and a central registry view — so editing
    behaves identically regardless of how the skill was created. One editor, not several.
  • Editing works for imported skills too. source: file skills must not be frozen:
    editing forks the import into an editable host copy while preserving provenance
    (source / source_path).
  • A skills management view — the registry as a first-class screen: list, search,
    open-to-edit, "used by N agents", delete, and export back to SKILL.md for
    portability.
  • Re-version on change with content-hash identity (cf. Kemia's content-addressed
    Profile-Bundle), so edits and re-imports converge instead of duplicating.

Principles

  • Editable in every scenario — created however you like, edited the same way.
  • One editor, not two — the same content editor wherever a skill is shown.
  • Provenance preserved — editing an imported skill keeps its origin recorded.
  • No size / slot vocabulary — same invisible-size posture as the rest of the epic.

Feasibility anchors in omadia

  • The skills registry already stores name, description, body, frontmatter, source
    and source_path, and the API already supports update/patch — so editing is an existing
    capability to extend, not invent.
  • The admin builder's node inspector already implements a skill name/body editor — the
    shared editor can grow from it. The work is mainly (a) lifting it into a reusable surface,
    (b) removing the imported-skill read-only limitation via fork-to-host-copy, and (c) adding
    a central management screen.

Non-goals

Open questions

  • Edit semantics for imported skills: edit in place, or fork to an editable host copy
    that preserves provenance — and what happens to the link when the upstream file changes?
  • Where the management view lives: admin, operator, or both — and how it relates to the
    existing node-graph inspector so there is one editor, not two.
  • Versioning: is content-hash re-versioning enough, or do skills need explicit version
    history / rollback?

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