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Skills

Skills are agent instructions (SKILL.md) plus optional supporting files that drwn resolves, selects, and projects into downstream tool directories (~/.claude/skills, ~/.codex/skills, project-scope equivalents).

Skill scopes​

Built-in repo-native skills live under one of four scope directories:

  • skills/shared — eligible for both Claude and Codex
  • skills/claude-only — eligible only for Claude Code
  • skills/codex-only — eligible only for Codex
  • skills/experimental — available only when explicitly selected

Scope limits projection targets. It does not activate a skill.

Where skills come from​

drwn resolves a skill name against these layers, in this order:

  1. Selected Card closure — a Card in the active project Worker whose manifest declares the skill. Card-bundled skills always win at project write time.
  2. Repo-native — the four scope directories above, in order shared → claude-only → codex-only → experimental.
  3. Package-backed bundles — installed via drwn machine skill install; live under ~/.agents/drwn/skills/<package>/<version>/ with a regular current pointer file naming the active version.
  4. Missing — surfaces as a typed write-time hard fail before any downstream mutation.

There is no scope-based promotion between repo-native and bundle sources; first match wins. Cards are the only layer that can shadow other sources at write time.

Explicit Selection​

Machine activation comes only from the selected immutable profile plus explicit capabilities.skills IDs in strict drwn.machine V1. Select an available skill with:

drwn machine skill enable <name>
drwn write --scope machine --skills-only --dry-run
drwn write --scope machine --skills-only

Project selection comes from the selected Worker closure plus explicit project overlays. Use drwn add skill <name> for a project-only declaration.

Ambient directories and existing target output are never activation authority.

Materialization to downstream tools​

drwn write resolves the selected machine or project skill set and copies skill directories into the appropriate machine or project target directories. Each copied directory is recorded as a managed-directory entry in the write record.

Per-write-record cleanup applies: drwn-owned stale skill directories (recorded in the previous write record) are removed when no longer in the effective state; user-owned replacements are preserved and reported as warnings.

See also​