skill-lifecycle-management

name	skill-lifecycle-management
description	Manage skills through lifecycle states — draft, beta, stable, deprecated, archived — applying promotion criteria, deprecation rules, and transition tracking. Use this when auditing skill maturity across a library, promoting a tested skill to stable, retiring a superseded skill, or tracking which skills are production-ready. Do not use for authoring new skills (use skill-authoring), improving individual skill quality (use skill-refinement), or curating the library catalog as a whole (use skill-catalog-curation).
license	Apache-2.0
compatibility	{"clients":["openai-codex","gemini-cli","opencode","github-copilot"]}
metadata	{"owner":"codex","domain":"skill-lifecycle-management","maturity":"draft","risk":"low","tags":["skill","lifecycle","management"]}

Purpose

Manages skills through their full lifecycle: draft → beta → stable → deprecated → archived. Ensures library stays coherent, retired skills don't break workflows, and maturity states reflect reality.

When to use this skill

Use when:

• User says "manage lifecycle", "what state is this?", "how do we retire properly?"
• Library audit produced lifecycle actions needing execution
• Skill being promoted, revised, or retired
• Long-running project needs to track active/deprecated/archived

Do NOT use when:

• Deprecating one specific skill (use skill-deprecation-manager)
• Authoring new skill (use skill-authoring)
• Library <15 skills—lightweight tracking sufficient

Operating procedure

1. Define lifecycle states:
   • draft: Being written, not validated—don't use in production
   • beta: Validated for basics, accepting feedback—use with monitoring
   • stable: Validated, promoted, default choice
   • deprecated: Replaced/not recommended—functional but don't use for new work
   • archived: Removed from active, reference only—don't install
2. Audit current states:
   • List skills with maturity field
   • Flag: draft >2 cycles, stable with bugs
3. Apply promotion criteria:
   • draft → beta: Tested with 3+ real prompts, passed
   • beta → stable: Evaluated with "Promote" verdict
4. Apply deprecation criteria:
   • Better replacement exists
   • Unused 3+ cycles
   • Consistently fails evaluation
5. Execute transitions:
   • Update metadata.maturity
   • Add event to PROVENANCE.md
6. Notify dependents:
   • If deprecated referenced in AGENTS.md, commands, skills—flag for update
7. Update library index

Output defaults

## Lifecycle Audit

### State Summary
| State | Count | Skills |
|-------|-------|--------|
| draft | 5 | skill-a, skill-b, ... |
| stable | 20 | ... |

### Recommended Transitions
| Skill | Current | Recommended | Reason |
|-------|---------|-------------|--------|
| skill-x | draft | beta | 5 tests passed |
| skill-y | stable | deprecated | Superseded |

### Dependency Impact
| Deprecated | Referenced By | Action |
|------------|---------------|--------|
| skill-y | AGENTS.md L45 | Update reference |

### Actions
1. Promote skill-x to beta
2. Deprecate skill-y, update AGENTS.md

References

• https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/agents/about-agent-skills — Agent skill structure including maturity fields
• https://developers.openai.com/codex/skills — Codex skill metadata format
• Library index/catalog for current state inventory
• Individual skill frontmatter metadata.maturity fields

Failure handling

• Maturity not tracked: Add maturity field to all skills based on evidence before proceeding
• Circular dependencies on deprecated skill: Create replacement first
• Disputed maturity: Default to more conservative state