Authoring Hermes-Agent Skills (in-repo)

Overview

There are two places a SKILL.md can live:

1. User-local, repo-backed: authored skills belong in a git repo — on this machine ~/Developer/kernel (remote ponti-studios/kernel) under skills/<name>/, the same library described in 3. Any older ~/Developer/skills checkout is obsolete; do not write there. ~/.agents/skills/<name> is the install store every agent reads, and ~/.hermes/skills/<name> holds the loader symlink the installer creates. Whether an entry there is a symlink to its source (an edit is live) or a copy (an edit is invisible until reinstall) depends on how it was installed — ls -l the entry before you assume an edit landed. A skill whose source of truth is another project repo stays a symlink there and is .gitignored — the validator reports it as external and skips it, because CI has no checkout of the other project. When the user names a skills directory, use that one. Layout, validator design and cross-framework portability: references/skill-library-repo.md.
2. In-repo (this skill is about this case): skills/<category>/<name>/SKILL.md or optional-skills/<category>/<name>/SKILL.md inside the hermes-agent repo — committed, shipped with the package. Use write_file + git add. skill_manage(action='create') does NOT target this tree.
3. Kernel library: ~/Developer/kernel (remote ponti-studios/kernel), under skills/<name>/, catalogued in skills.sh.json. Validated by python3 scripts/validate_skills.py (catalog parity, links, name/directory agreement), muse skills validate <path> (format), and python3 -m unittest discover -s tests. Install and update with npx skills: npx skills add ponti-studios/kernel --skill <name> -g --yes writes ~/.agents/skills/<name> and creates the ~/.hermes/skills/<name> symlink itself, npx skills update -g --yes refreshes, and npx skills list -g prints each entry's Source:. muse skills validate owns format only — muse skills install copies to ~/.config/muse/skills/<name> and wires no loader, so it is not the installer. Read the repo's own README/AGENTS install section before choosing an installer. Mechanics and the wiring: references/skill-library-repo.md.