| name | skill-lint-gate |
| description | Pre-commit gate for staged library SKILL.md — a license/provenance regression-guard plus agnix spec validation, for skill-authoring roles. Use when composing the maintainer or role-curator role, when a commit touches a library/**/SKILL.md, or when diagnosing why a commit was blocked by the skill-lint hook. |
| ai_hats | {"git_hooks":{"pre-commit":["git_hooks/pre-commit-skill-lint.sh"]}} |
| license | MIT |
Skill Lint Gate
Pure-infrastructure hook-carrier skill. It contributes one git pre-commit hook
that runs two checks over the SKILL.md files a commit touches and blocks on
either. There is no agent-side decision logic here — the value is delivered
entirely through composition.
What it gates
Over STAGED library/**/SKILL.md (changed-files scope, so the gate never
retro-blocks the pre-existing backlog), the hook runs, in order:
- License/provenance regression-guard (HATS-877 — pure bash, always-on, NOT
fail-open). Blocks when a skill has no non-empty
license: frontmatter, or is
declared-derived (sibling metadata.yaml has an upstream: block) but is
missing its co-located LICENSE file. Its scope deliberately includes the
golang-* pack — that pack is exactly the third-party derived content this
guard protects. It exists to keep the HATS-875 licensing backfill from
silently regressing.
- agnix spec-lint (HATS-617 — agnix
against the repo-root
.agnix.toml; target claude-code; rules XML-001 /
XP-SK-001 / VER-001 disabled as convention false positives). Excludes
the golang-* pack (drift handled separately — HATS-626/627). Fail-open if
agnix/node is absent. agnix non-zero exit blocks the commit.
Who gets it
Installed via the skill-engineer trait, composed only by the maintainer and
role-curator roles. Other roles do not receive the hook. The server-side
counterpart (CI lint-skills job) is HATS-627.
How to bypass
Fix the flagged issue, or — after confirming the skill is intentionally
non-conforming — skip the gate for a single commit:
AI_HATS_SKILL_LINT_ACK=1 git commit ...
If agnix / node is not installed, only the agnix check is a loud no-op
(fail-open): it prints a SKIPPED notice and allows the commit, so a missing
optional dev tool never wedges work. The license/provenance guard is pure bash
and always runs. Inside an ai-hats agent node is present, so both checks are live.
Overrides
AI_HATS_SKILL_LINT_ACK=1 — allow the current commit despite findings.AI_HATS_SKILL_LINT_CMD — override the agnix invocation (default
npx --yes agnix@0.29.0); used by the test suite to inject a stub.
