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Skill Evolution

How skills improve through use — and when to let them die.

The Evolution Cycle

Forge → Use → Encounter edge case → Update → Use → Encounter edge case → ...

Skills should never be "finished." They're living documents that improve every time an agent uses them and discovers something the skill didn't cover.

Types of Evolution

1. Edge case addition

The most common evolution. An agent uses a skill and hits a case it doesn't handle:

## Edge Cases
+ - **Soft delete:** `DELETE` sets `deleted_at` timestamp, doesn't remove the row

2. Step refinement

A step is too vague or produces inconsistent results. The agent sharpens it:

## Steps
- 3. Create the test file
+ 3. Create the test file with at minimum: renders without crashing, handles empty props, snapshot test

3. Script improvement

A script fails on an edge case. The agent fixes the script and notes the change:

# scripts/scaffold.sh
+ # Handle branch names with slashes (sanitize to dashes)
+ BRANCH=$(echo "$BRANCH" | sed 's/\//-/g')

4. Skill splitting

A skill grows too large (>200 lines). Split into focused sub-skills:

api-endpoint/           →  api-endpoint/        (core CRUD)
                            api-endpoint-auth/   (auth middleware patterns)
                            api-endpoint-upload/  (file upload handling)

5. Skill deprecation

A skill becomes obsolete (framework change, convention shift):

---
name: css-module-setup
description: "[DEPRECATED: migrated to Tailwind] Set up CSS modules for components."
---

Move to an archived/ section in the registry.

Evolution Signals

Signal Action
Agent uses skill successfully Increment usage-count, update last-used
Agent uses skill but adds a workaround Update skill with the workaround
Agent skips skill and does it differently Review: is the skill outdated?
Skill unused for 90+ days Consider archiving
Skill over 200 lines Consider splitting
Two skills overlap significantly Merge or differentiate

Tracking Evolution

The .skills-registry.md tracks basic usage. For deeper tracking, skills can maintain a changelog in their directory:

.skills/api-endpoint/
├── SKILL.md
├── CHANGELOG.md     # Optional: evolution history
└── scripts/

# Changelog — api-endpoint

## 2026-02-26
- Added soft-delete edge case

## 2026-02-22
- Added file upload handling (multipart/form-data)

## 2026-02-18
- Initial forge (by codex-agent)

This is optional but valuable for understanding how a skill matured.

The Decay Rule

Skills that haven't been used in 90 days and have fewer than 5 lifetime uses are candidates for archiving. This keeps the colony lean and relevant.

An archived skill isn't deleted — it's moved to the ## Archived section in the registry. If someone needs it again, it can be revived.

Archiving

A skill is archived, not deleted, when it falls under the decay rule, when it's superseded by a successor, or when the convention it encoded no longer applies. Archiving is cheap to undo and preserves the history that the skill once existed.

How to archive a skill:

  1. Set metadata.status: archived and add metadata.archived-reason: "<short reason>" to the skill's frontmatter.
  2. Move the row out of the registry's ## Available Skills table into a ## Archived table with columns Skill | Archived | Reason.
  3. Leave the SKILL.md file in place. Do not delete the directory — other skills or colonies may still reference it by name for history.
  4. If a successor exists, add metadata.superseded-by: <new-skill-name> so agents can redirect.

How to revive a skill:

  1. Clear metadata.status (or set it to active).
  2. Move the row back into ## Available Skills.
  3. If conventions changed, review the skill before first use and evolve it in place.

Registry shape for archived entries:

## Archived

| Skill | Archived | Reason |
|-------|----------|--------|
| css-module-setup | 2026-02-22 | Migrated to Tailwind; skill no longer applies |

Keep the archive table ordered by most-recently-archived so recent retirements are easy to scan.