skill-builder

name	skill-builder
description	Create, audit, optimize Claude Code skills. Commands: skills, list, new, strip, optimize, agents, hooks, verify, inline, ledger, cascade, checksums, convert, shell-safety, route, backup, restore, audit, reconcile, code-eval, model-map, local-mode, update, version
when_to_use	When creating, auditing, or optimizing Claude Code skills, or when working with SKILL.md files, hooks, or agents
argument-hint	[command] [skill] [--execute]
version	1.5
minimum-effort-level	high
strictness	standard
allowed-tools	Read, Glob, Grep, Write, Edit, TaskCreate, TaskUpdate, TaskList, TaskGet
hooks	{"PostCompact":[{"hooks":[{"type":"command","command":"echo '{\"additionalContext\": \"REMINDER: Directives are sacred. Never reword, paraphrase, or summarize text between <!-- origin: user | immutable: true --> markers. Optimization is restructuring, not rewriting. Move content — never rewrite it.\"}'","statusMessage":"Re-injecting directive awareness..."}]}]}

Skill Builder

Quick Commands

Command	Action
/skill-builder	Full audit: disclaimer → scan + report → auto-executes recommended fixes (Audit Autonomy Gate)
/skill-builder audit	Same as above
/skill-builder audit --review	Full scan + report + would-be Execution Plan, zero writes
/skill-builder audit --quick	Lightweight audit: frontmatter + line counts; auto-fixes mechanical findings
/skill-builder cascade [skill]	Validation cascade analysis: detect over-validation suppressing output
/skill-builder dev [command]	Run any command with skill-builder itself included

---

Directives

"When a decision needs to be made that isn't overtly obvious, and guesses are involved, AGENTS ARE MANDATORY, in order to provide additional input in decision making."

— Added 2026-02-22, source: user directive

"Each agent being created by this system always has to have an appropriate persona that is not being used anywhere else."

— Added 2026-02-22, source: user directive

"When deploying a Team, one of the team member's persona is a research assistant who will research the issue using read-only reference tools. Other team members may also make requests from the research assistant to help augment the outcome."

— Added 2026-02-23, source: user directive (tool specifics in references/agents-teams.md)

"When the dev flag gets called, you ALWAYS concentrate on the distribution files first, then sync changes to the .claude directory after."

— Added 2026-05-08, source: user directive (after dev edits repeatedly landed in the runtime copy instead of the source distribution)

"No hooks! We don't distribute hooks. The project only makes hooks on the host system."

— Added 2026-05-08, source: user directive

"Exception to the no-hooks-distribution rule: skill-builder's own load-bearing enforcement hooks — protect-directives.sh and unique-persona.sh — DO ship in the source distribution and the installer fetches them. They protect two sacred user directives (no rewording of immutable blocks; persona uniqueness across agents). Without them, every fresh install silently loses load-bearing enforcement. The general no-distribute rule still applies to every other hook on the host system. Wiring into settings.local.json remains host-local."

— Added 2026-05-11, source: user directive (after the regenerate-and-rewire loop revealed that no-distribute leaves load-bearing enforcement off on every fresh host).

"Bifurcate jobs based on the currently selected model — split jobs between creative work (ie image generation, content generation, and design generation) and coding (everything else, including testing). When we run an audit, I want to make sure it's fluid in managing switching between models, with prompting, or not."

— Added 2026-06-01, source: user directive (the lane→model mapping is intentionally arbitrary/configurable because models change constantly; the model IDs live in references/model-lanes.md, never inside this immutable block).

"It shouldn't make any decisions based on performance, but the full completion of integrity of skills expected to be performed by the user. Don't make decisions based on 'shortcut' mentality."

— Added 2026-06-04, source: user directive (governs the reconcile command: redundancy is never the target; only completion-breaking conflict is actionable; integrity over performance, never a shortcut).

"When a project is audited and the model switching setup is deciding what is most likely creative, I want to make sure to flag any skill that has to do with communication, language translation, text evaluation, etc as creative."

"Anything that has to do with research must be performed by the coding model before being handed off to creative."

— Added 2026-06-06, source: user directive (widens the creative lane of the 2026-06-01 bifurcation directive to communication / language-translation / text-evaluation skills, with research explicitly staying on the coding model and taking precedence over creative signals; the signal lists implementing this live in references/model-lanes.md § Advisory Lane Suggestion, never inside this immutable block).

"Why option 3 is important, and this should be a directive moving forward, there are usually explicit directions on directing the text-evaluator workflow. These workflows may include routing points to other skills, so agents should be highly focused as to preserve the original intentent of the skill and preserve its workflow as the highest priority. There are no shortcuts. We aren't doing this for token efficiency. We're doing this to actually preserve the workflow and make the main model most effective at its task."

— Added 2026-06-06, source: user directive (captured verbatim from the lane-delegation workshop; "option 3" refers to the workshop's fleet-design choice of bespoke per-skill agents over a shared generic fleet. Governs lane-pinned excursion delegation: agents are designed per skill from that skill's reviewed material; workflow preservation — including routing points to other skills — is the highest priority; token efficiency is never a valid rationale. The delegation machinery lives in references/lane-delegation.md and references/procedures/agents.md, never inside this immutable block.)

"All agents created or modified during the audit should have a model specified, per the user's choice of creativity model and everything else model."

— Added 2026-06-06, source: user directive (every AGENT.md that audit — or any command running under audit — creates or modifies must carry an explicit model: field, resolved from the user's Lane→Model choices in references/model-lanes.md: creative-lane work gets the creativity model, everything else gets the everything-else/coding model. The assignment mechanics live in references/lane-delegation.md § Audit Model-Assignment Rule, never inside this immutable block.)

"The system is a 2-brain harness that balances between creativity and analytics: at the audit's single onboarding question, the user picks the creative model and the model for everything else. /route is the preferred smart door that matches the orchestrator to the work's lane with at most one prompt per endeavor. If the user wants to hand run skills, that's absolutely fine — hand-run skills stay lane-aware through their own slim gates, which go silent when route already covered the endeavor."

— Added 2026-06-06, source: user directive (ratified from the 2-Brain Harness workshop; see ledger DEC-2026-06-06-two-brain-harness and INC-2026-06-06-silent-lane-correctness. Drafted from the user's verbatim session wording and ratified as a unit. The gate/dispatch mechanics live in references/procedures/route.md and references/model-lanes.md, never inside this immutable block.)

"When the user asks to create skills, route looks for a similar skill and modifies that or builds a new one — and the skill creation decision is part of the skill-builder skill. The system gives Claude Code as much creative leeway as possible to propose; the user ratifies. Skill management is risk-tiered to the analytical brain: high-risk commands prompt for it, low-risk additions run wherever the session is."

— Added 2026-06-06, source: user directive (ratified from the 2-Brain Harness workshop. Route's no-match path hands off to skill-builder's intent-router, which owns the modify-vs-create decision; route never synthesizes the dev prefix; direct /skill-builder invocation remains the always-legal maintenance hatch. The handoff and risk-tier mechanics live in references/procedures/route.md and references/procedures/intent-router.md, never inside this immutable block.)

"The orchestrator has an army of minions, bounded to a platoon: delegation is justified only by model-fit (cross-lane work) or context isolation (unbiased evaluation), never by token efficiency or speed. Every minion is pinned to one of the two brains. A minion that discovers ambiguity returns the question to the orchestrator — it never guesses."

— Added 2026-06-06, source: user directive (ratified from the 2-Brain Harness workshop, panel-bounded from "army" to "platoon" per the fleet-mechanics review. The delegation rationale vocabulary, AMBIGUOUS sentinel, and fleet-hardening mechanics live in references/lane-delegation.md, never inside this immutable block.)

"No user should ever be asked this question. No model switching should be requested during the audit process or any function of skill-builder. However, I would like to mention that there be a disclaimer that must be accepted by the user before proceeding with audit. The disclaimer should mention that skill-builder is designed to be used with Opus 4.7 or higher model. However, skill created with skill-builder are backwards compatible with earlier models. Please backup your CLAUDE.md and .claude directory before proceeding."

— Added 2026-06-06, source: user directive (issued in reaction to the audit Step 4f batched switch prompt — "this question" refers to that AskUserQuestion instructing the user to run /model. Eliminates every model-switch request across skill-builder: the audit 4f switch prompt, route's dispatch-time lane preflight prompt, the embedded MODEL-LANE-GATE preflight prompt, and route's high-risk analytical-brain prompt all become report-only advisories. Supersedes prompting mechanics only, newest-wins, user-ratified 2026-06-06: the 2026-06-01 "with prompting, or not" resolves permanently to "or not"; the 2026-06-06 "at most one prompt per endeavor" resolves to zero switch prompts; the 2026-06-06 "high-risk commands prompt for it" becomes a one-line advisory. The lane system, the audit's single onboarding question, and the every-audit Lane→Model picker are unchanged per the same ratification — they configure the mapping and never request a switch. The disclaimer-acceptance checkpoint lives at the top of references/procedures/audit.md; advisory mechanics live in audit.md § Step 4f and references/procedures/route.md, never inside this immutable block.)

"likewise, I would like to prevent questions like this from happening, too. ... The audit command should be as automated and streamlined as possible. There shouldn't be any hard questions like this for the user."

"I don't mind the two questions for choosing the creative model and analytical model. that needs asked every time audit is ran, regardless. Just limit any additional questions. Always do the work, instead of suggestion to skip work that will improve the system."

— Added 2026-06-06, source: user directive (first clause issued in reaction to audit Step 6's batched execution menu — "questions like this" refers to that Fixes/System multi-select AskUserQuestion; "likewise" extends the same-day no-switch-prompt directive from model-switch prompts to execution menus. Second clause is the user's clarification in the same session: the Lane→Model picker's two model questions are asked on EVERY audit run, regardless; everything else is limited; improvement work is DONE, never offered as skippable. Together they abolish audit's Step 6 execution menu and every mid-audit decision question: disclaimer acceptance (audit Step 0, whose backup warning is the consent instrument) authorizes the run — audit scans, reports, then auto-executes its recommended fixes and terminal route tasks as a sequential TaskCreate list, including bootstrap-mode CLAUDE.md extraction at high confidence and Awareness Ledger creation, with agent panels — never user menus — resolving judgment; ambiguity resolves to the conservative alternative or DEFERS to the report's Deferred Items table with a ready-to-run command, never a guess, never a question, never a silent skip. Only genuinely destructive or ratification-gated work defers: strip deletions, convert/migration (inline sacred gates), quarantine repairs of hand-authored files, protective/unrecoverable dead wiring, and git-dependent fixes in no-VCS projects. The only questions any audit may ask are exactly three: the Step 0 disclaimer, the one-time 4f-setup onboarding, and the every-audit Lane→Model picker. Supersedes execution-menu mechanics only, newest-wins: Rule 3's "offers the user a choice", the Step 6 menu, the bootstrap extraction menu, quick-audit's per-item y/n offer, and the under-audit post-action-chain menu all become automatic; standalone commands invoked outside audit keep their own menus. The AUTO/DEFER tiering and execution mechanics live in references/procedures/audit.md § Step 6, never inside this immutable block.)

"The 2026-05-11 hooks-in-source exception extends to the PowerShell companions of the same two hooks — protect-directives.ps1 and unique-persona.ps1 — so Windows hosts keep the mechanical backstop. The exception set is exactly these four files: the two bash originals and their two PowerShell ports. Nothing else about the no-hooks-distribution rule changes; wiring into settings.local.json remains host-local, and the hooks procedure wires the OS-appropriate variant."

— Added 2026-06-06, source: user directive (ratified via AskUserQuestion — "Ship .ps1 companions" — during the cross-platform installer session; see ledger DEC-2026-06-06-cross-platform-installer. Drafted from the ratified option's stated scope and ratified as a unit. Amends the 2026-05-11 exception's file set only; that directive's text above stays verbatim. The .ps1 ports are fail-open and remain dormant on any host until wired via /skill-builder hooks; the port implementations live in skill-builder/hooks/, never inside this immutable block.)

"When you give route a task, it reads the whole course of action it's been handed and picks the dominant hemisphere for the job — the brain the main loop will mostly run in — and relies on the agents for the rest. Route can't switch the model itself, but it's the one door allowed to ask: when the dominant hemisphere doesn't match the current session model, route asks the user to run /model and waits before dispatching. This doesn't override bringing up a skill manually — hand-run skills stay advisory-only. This restores route's dispatch-time ask, superseding (newest-wins) only the route clause of the 2026-06-06 No-Switch-Prompt directive; audit and the per-skill gates stay report-only."

— Added 2026-06-07, source: user directive (ratified "ratify" after a 3-agent fidelity/conflict/premortem panel tightened the verbatim wording. Restores route's dispatch-time ask ONLY: when the dominant hemisphere — the matched entry skill's PRIMARY lane, or the task's lane on the no-match path — does not match the active model, /route alone may ask the user to run /model and wait. Route can never switch the model itself; a tie/UNCONFIRMED lane resolves to the analytical brain and never asks; off-hemisphere steps delegate to lane-pinned agents. Supersedes newest-wins ONLY the route-dispatch-prompt clause of the 2026-06-06 No-Switch-Prompt directive — audit Step 4f, the per-skill MODEL-LANE-GATE, and hand-run invocation stay report-only/advisory-only. The ask mechanics, dominant-hemisphere resolution, tie default, and assessment-based endeavor coverage live in references/procedures/route.md § Canonical Dispatch CHECKPOINT clause 2, never inside this immutable block.)

"Hand-run skills stay non-blocking on a lane mismatch, but the advisory must name the exact remedy: state the preferred model and the literal command — run /model <preferred> and re-invoke — then proceed as-is. Never a question, never blocking, and the skill still can never switch the model itself."

— Added 2026-06-11, source: user directive (ratified via AskUserQuestion — "Strengthen the advisory (Recommended)" — after a 3-agent research/skeptic/premortem panel reviewed the hand-run vs route-door asymmetry; drafted from the ratified option's stated scope and ratified as a unit. Amends ADVISORY WORDING ONLY, superseding (newest-wins) the 2026-06-06 No-Switch-Prompt directive's never-name-/model mechanic for the per-skill MODEL-LANE-GATE advisory line alone: naming the command informationally is now REQUIRED there; asking a question, blocking, or switching remains forbidden. The 2026-06-07 route-ask directive's door ask, audit Step 4f's report-only advisories, and the hand-run advisory-only rule are all unchanged. The advisory template lives in references/procedures/route.md § Step 8c clause 4, never inside this immutable block.)

"build that scrub loop for text and images.. and make sure we do research around these topics an explicitely update, through audit, these mechanisms for any skill that manages this type of workflow"

"But, i'd like item #2 to build new skills or funciton within existing skills of the project to facilitate all these points?"

— Added 2026-06-11, source: user directive (the scrub-loop build order, issued with nine accompanying scrub principles — detection philosophy: clustering, not signals; three tiers of tells; the subtle tells that survive review; fixes introduce new tells; protect the voice, don't just hunt AI; context-isolated validation; severity architecture; SEO/snippet text conflicts with voice; keep the pattern library living. The nine principles are preserved VERBATIM in references/creative-integrity.md § The Nine Scrub Principles — user-origin, immutable there — never paraphrased into this block. The second clause ("item #2" refers to the Creative Integrity audit check) was issued the same day after the first implementation shipped report-only: it upgrades audit Step 4c-bis from report-and-defer to BUILDING the missing scrub machinery — new functions within existing skills, and new evaluator skills where none exist. Build mechanics were premortem-hardened and ratified as a unit: builds are strictly ADDITIVE (a build never rewords hand-authored text and never touches an immutable block); build-into-existing fires only when the loop leg is demonstrably absent (equivalence-uncertain degrades to DEFER, never to a competing chain); whole-new-skill scaffolding fires only on DECLARED creative-lane evidence, never inferred classification; voice-dependent gates in built scaffolds are advisory-only when the project has no voice profile; builds are atomic-or-absent with code-eval-grade modifiable-true seams. Scrub loops themselves stay per the design panel's conservative scope (auto-fix MUST FIX + hard-directive flags only; best-so-far + divergence abort; humanity floor; fixability classifier; provenance guard). Research around these topics runs on the coding model per the 2026-06-06 research-precedence directive. The compliance checklist, canonical loop spec, build policy, scaffolds, and research digest live in references/creative-integrity.md, never inside this immutable block.)

"Okay, we have a problem with the text-eval not being installed if nothing yet exists... check out this correspondence..."

"... and I also want to make sure that existing skills that do the function of text-eval get updated with audit, no questions asked."

"yeah, keep in mind, we may be adding more "signs" to flag in the future, so everything will need to be forceably upgraded."

— Added 2026-06-12, source: user directive (issued with an attached audit transcript in which an all-coding-lane project received no evaluator — zero declared creative lanes meant the 2026-06-11 new-skill tier never fired, and the audit defended the non-build as correct; the user rejects that defense. First clause: audit installs the text-eval evaluator scaffold whenever nothing serving that function yet exists — the precondition is ABSENCE ALONE: the signal-based, never name-based existence test finds no skill performing the evaluator function AND no text-eval skill directory exists (mirroring the code-evaluator ensure-exists precedent, audit.md § Step 4a-bis). Lane declarations no longer gate the build; the scaffold's own lane: creative frontmatter is authored by the build, never inferred from any existing skill, and the project's Skill→Lane table is never touched. Supersedes newest-wins ONLY the "declared creative-lane evidence" precondition of the 2026-06-11 build clause's new-skill tier (and its inferred-only→DEFER row); every other hardening of that clause stands unchanged — strictly additive builds, demonstrably-absent panel confirmation for build-into-existing, equivalence-uncertain→DEFER, atomic-or-absent, name-collision guard, advisory-only voice gates absent a voice profile. Panel-adopted guards ratified with this directive: a project-level <!-- creative-scrub-build: off --> marker in references/model-lanes.md silently suppresses the new-skill build (declarative opt-out, never a question); lanes unconfigured → the scaffold's agent ships with model: absent and flagged, never an invented ID (Audit Agent Model-Assignment Gate clause 4). Second clause: skills qualify for updates by FUNCTION — the lane-free § Scope signals (evaluator, scrub, voice machinery) already implement this — and "no questions asked" means audit APPLIES the updates instead of deferring them: pattern-library gap appends into hand-authored libraries move from DEFER to AUTO, written only as ONE machine-owned origin: skill-builder | modifiable: true appendix region at the end of the library file — existing bytes never modified, structural fit verified before the write (no parseable fit → paste-ready DEFER row, the atomic-or-absent discipline), the .scrub-gaps.acked sidecar is the sole dedup authority (acked slugs never re-append even if equivalence misses a user-moved row), and the append fires only when the skill's evaluator demonstrably grounds against the full library file (else DEFER — the inert-sidecar lesson, DEC-2026-06-08). Immutable blocks stay FLAG-NEVER-TOUCH; equivalence-uncertain stays silently skipped. Third clause (same session): the shipped signs catalog will keep growing, and growth propagates FORCIBLY — whenever the shipped catalog version anchor (references/creative-integrity/version.md) is newer than what an installed evaluator or library was last checked against, audit MUST run the gap comparison and apply the AUTO appends in that same run (never skipped, never offered, never a question); scaffold-generated libraries' machine-owned regions are version-synced to the current catalog the same way code-eval sync refreshes its shipped references; the ack sidecar suppresses only slugs whose shipped entry is unchanged — new signs are never acked and always land. Design panels are agents, never user questions, per the 2026-02-22 agents directive. The build and tiering mechanics live in references/creative-integrity.md § Audit Policy / § Pattern-Library Gap Check and references/procedures/audit.md § Step 4c-bis and § Step 6, never inside this immutable block.)

"I would like to add a gatekeeping item to the audit process. After the initial question, asking for approval to edit Claude files, I would like to have a separate gatekeeping question. but I would like to have this be a check box item that people check boxes and move forward. here is what I'd like to accomplish. Not everyone wants text-eval or code-eval installed into their project skills. There may be other evaluations or helpers that we might want to add to this list. You might check on that, but I think those are the main culprits. The user may already have intricate skills sets for this that we don't want to manage or mess up too bad or cause undo processing when what they have works already. I envision a notice that comes up and asks if you would like to have these installed the user will have a check box by each one they want. if the items are already present in the project there will be checkmarks by those items already as ready to push forward. If an item is unchecked, then audit should remove that skill set from the project."

"Yeah, this question should be moved to second in line right after the acknowledgment question."

"If route is in this list, just make sure that in parentheses next to it it shows as recommended item. The same goes for ledger."

"Always defer to strip. But the removal process should be smart enough to go through all of the rest of the skills and remove it completely so that no one is connected to it referring to it at all. That's why this question comes up second in line, because the route index and rote embedding will affect the outcome too."

— Added 2026-06-24, source: user directive (ratified after a 3-agent design panel — supersession cartographer / demolition-safety inspector / intent steward — mapped the conflict surface, and the user ratified the removal semantics via AskUserQuestion: "Always defer to strip"). Adds a SECOND audit question, the Companion-Skill Selection Gate, fired immediately after the Step 0 disclaimer (audit.md § Step 0.3): a multi-select checkbox of the evaluator/helper companion skills audit force-installs — text-eval, code-evaluator, route (recommended), awareness-ledger (recommended) — pre-checked by a signal-based (never name-based) presence test, with the recommended pair labeled in parentheses per the user's wording. CHECKED + absent → the existing AUTO install task fires (this gate now AUTHORIZES the install-on-absence / ensure-exists appends of Steps 4a, 4a-bis, 4c-bis, and 4g; they no longer fire unconditionally). UNCHECKED → the install is suppressed and, if the skill is present, removal is DEFERRED to /skill-builder strip <skill> in the Deferred Items table (never an AUTO delete: the user ratified "Always defer to strip"); strip performs the complete cross-reference disconnection across every other skill plus the route index / embed refresh, which is why this gate fires SECOND, before the audit commits its terminal route tasks. A provenance guard limits removal to skills skill-builder itself scaffolded; a user's hand-authored evaluator is detected-as-present (so no duplicate is offered) but never offered for removal. Choices persist in a per-project <!-- companion-skills: … --> marker in references/model-lanes.md (back-compat: a legacy creative-scrub-build: off marker reads as text-eval=off). Supersedes newest-wins ONLY: (a) the "absence alone" auto-install trigger of the 2026-06-12 install-on-absence directive for text-eval, and the "by default, not opt-in" auto-append of code-eval create / ledger / the route bootstrap, which now gate on the checkbox/marker; (b) the "exactly three questions" count of the 2026-06-06 Audit Autonomy directive, since the audit now asks FOUR sanctioned questions (disclaimer, this companion gate, the one-time 4f-setup onboarding, the every-audit Lane→Model picker). Every other hardening of those directives stands verbatim and untouched, and the destructive-work-DEFERS floor (strip deletions never auto-run; deletion is delegated to strip, never reimplemented) is honored rather than superseded. The gate is suppressed in headless / non-interactive / audit --quick runs (no checkbox can render, and absence of an answer NEVER means remove: headless honors the existing marker or the install-on-absence default and removes nothing). The gate, marker scheme, provenance guard, and DEFER-removal mechanics live in references/procedures/audit.md § Step 0.3 and § Step 6 and references/model-lanes.md § Companion Skills, never inside this immutable block.)

"Actually, I'd like to add one more feature first. And I would like to add this feature to the second question slot, pushing the rest of the questions down. I would like Claude to ask if we would like to back up or not. The backup process would create a new zip file of the CLAUDE.md and the claude directory with the current date as part of the name. I'm not sure what we should call the directory that we put the zip files in, but there should be a rotation of the last three files and no more. This process will also need to check .getignore if it exists and make sure that this directory is excluded from the repository."

"Likewise, we also need a restore function that will restore one of the three files. If this is a new project where the audit is running for the first time we will want to make sure that this backup is special and never removed by the rotation of the three saves. That way if you choose Claude uninstall, it will restore this original Claude and skill set etc.."

"Something else that we should probably add is updating the disclaimer. It should probably be rewarded to let the person know that there is a backup process available. The user will be asked about it making use of this backup process will allow for a clean uninstall of Claude enforcer."

— Added 2026-06-24, source: user directive (ratified after a 3-agent design panel — portable-mechanism engineer / recovery-integrity inspector / procedure cartographer — resolved the cross-platform, data-loss, and flow-placement decisions; the user directed the build with "Do it"). Adds the Step 0.2 Backup Offer as the new SECOND audit question, pushing the Companion-Skill Selection Gate to THIRD and raising the sanctioned-question count to FIVE (disclaimer, backup, companion gate, one-time 4f-setup onboarding, every-audit Lane→Model picker). On "yes," a zip of CLAUDE.md + the .claude/ directory, date-stamped, is written under .claude-backups/ at the repo root (a sibling of .claude/, never nested — so the zip cannot swallow its own output; the user left the directory name to skill-builder's choice). Rotation keeps the last 3 rotating snapshots; the FIRST-EVER backup (a project's first audit) is a pinned baseline that rotation never removes, so the original CLAUDE.md and skill set survive forever and a later clean uninstall of claude-enforcer can be restored from it. .gitignore is updated to exclude .claude-backups/ only if a .gitignore already exists. A standalone restore command restores CLAUDE.md + .claude/ from a chosen snapshot (baseline, rotating, or a pre-restore safety snapshot). Restore is HIGH-RISK/DESTRUCTIVE — strip's mirror image (overwrite, not delete) — so it is display-default + --execute + a confirmation gate, takes an automatic pre-restore snapshot first (its own undo), checks VCS like audit Step 0.5, shows a blast-radius diff before overwriting, verifies the source's integrity before trusting it, and is NEVER auto-fired by audit (the destructive-work-DEFERS floor). The audit Step 0 disclaimer's machinery-disclosure bullet is extended to announce the backup offer and that taking it enables a clean uninstall/restore — the first three disclaimer bullets stay sacred-verbatim (2026-06-06 directive) and are not touched. The backup zip runs FIRST in the Step 6 auto-execution phase (before any AUTO edit, code-eval/route, or deferred strip) so it captures pre-audit state; it is skipped in headless / non-interactive / audit --quick and never blocks. Supersedes newest-wins ONLY the question COUNT — the 2026-06-24 Companion-Skill directive's "FOUR sanctioned questions" and the 2026-06-06 Audit Autonomy directive's "exactly three" become FIVE — and the Companion gate's "fires SECOND" framing (it now fires THIRD, displaced by the backup offer; that earlier directive's verbatim text stays byte-for-byte unchanged, superseded only in this prose). No script is shipped: the backup/restore mechanics are markdown procedures driving host-generated commands (the checksums precedent), and the restore kit (RESTORE-README.md + restore.sh/.ps1) is host-generated into .claude-backups/, never added to the manifest — so the baseline restores even after the skill is uninstalled. The mechanics live in references/procedures/backup.md and references/procedures/restore.md and references/procedures/audit.md § Step 0.2 and § Step 6, never inside this immutable block.)

"I like the idea of breaking up the list between Evaluators and Helpers."

— Added 2026-06-25, source: user directive (ratified after a 3-agent panel — regression-hunter / premortem-analyst / skeptic — mapped the conflict surface). Reshapes the Step 0.3 Companion-Skill Selection Gate into TWO grouped multi-selects — Evaluators (text-eval, code-evaluator) and Helpers (route, awareness-ledger) — rendered as two question objects inside ONE AskUserQuestion call. Two question objects in one call is one question slot (the Lane→Model picker precedent — two model questions, one call, one slot), so the sanctioned-question count stays FIVE — this directive adds ZERO new audit questions; it only restructures the existing one. The split's render mechanics live in references/procedures/audit.md § Step 0.3 + § Step 6 and references/model-lanes.md § Companion Skills, never inside this immutable block.)

"I'd like to adjust the checkboxes for audit that is meant to install/uninstall custom skills built by this package. I'd like to make this much easier. I'd like to check the boxes of what people want to install, (or update). uninstall can happen manually. This will remove some of the confusion. ... also, claude-fable-5 is not part of the advisor pool for that check area. All model selections should work off the same pool to choose from."

— Added 2026-07-17, source: user directive (design vetted by a 3-agent panel — regression-hunter / premortem-analyst / skeptic — before authoring). Reshapes the Step 0.3 Companion-Skill Selection Gate into a NATURAL install-only widget: a checked box means INSTALL; an unchecked box means nothing happens; the gate never uninstalls — removal is exclusively the user's own manual /skill-builder strip <name> --execute, whenever they choose. Only ABSENT companions render as checkbox options (a present companion has nothing a checkbox could authorize: its updates — code-eval sync, forced catalog propagation, the terminal route tasks — already run unconditionally, satisfying the directive's "(or update)" clause; present companions are listed informationally with the exact strip command named, per the 2026-06-11 named-command advisory). A group with no absent members is omitted; all four present → the gate is a one-line notice, not a question. The empty default is inert SYMMETRICALLY: an interactive empty submission installs nothing, and the headless/--quick marker-absent fallback likewise installs nothing (a user-ordered reversal of the install-on-absence default, so the two modes can never disagree; a persisted <name>=on marker still authorizes headless installs). Marker semantics: on = installed/authorized; off = "do not auto-install while absent," NEVER "remove"; a present-but-not-rendered companion PRESERVES its existing marker value (a prior hand-set off is never silently flipped — the INC-2026-07-01 keep-semantics lesson), and a missing key resolves on. The "(recommended)" labels on route and awareness-ledger are RESTORED — the original 2026-06-24 parenthetical wording reads correctly again once a check means install. Supersedes newest-wins ONLY: (a) the 2026-06-24 directive's removal clause ("If an item is unchecked, then audit should remove that skill set from the project") and its "Always defer to strip" DEFER-row mechanic — strip remains the sole deletion path, now user-initiated only, so the destructive-work-DEFERS floor is honored by subtraction; (b) the 2026-06-24 inversion follow-up's inverted-widget and no-"(recommended)" rendering mechanics; (c) the 2026-06-12 install-on-absence default as an unconsented trigger in BOTH interactive-empty and headless-marker-absent states. The 2026-06-25 Evaluators/Helpers split, the one-call/one-slot rendering, the FIVE-question ceiling (now a ceiling the gate may come in under), the headless suppression rule, the marker persistence, and the provenance/no-duplicate guard all stand unchanged. Second clause (advisor pool): every model-choosing question — the two lane questions AND the global advisor question — draws from the ONE shared pool defined at lane-delegation.md § Lane→Model Picker (statics newest-first plus the live-discovered latest; claude-fable-5 always offered in the advisor question and never dropped); consumer files must reference that pool, never restate a private option list. The gate, marker scheme, and pool mechanics live in references/procedures/audit.md § Step 0.3 and § Step 6, references/model-lanes.md § Companion Skills, and references/lane-delegation.md § Lane→Model Picker + § Global Advisor Model, never inside this immutable block.)

CHECKPOINT — Non-Obvious Decision Gate:

1. Before committing to any classification, structural change, or content-removal decision that depends on interpretation, list the decision's alternatives in one sentence each.
2. IF exactly one alternative matches a concrete, measurable criterion (ID match, regex match, frontmatter field present/absent, file exists/absent) → CONTINUE without an agent.
3. IF two or more alternatives are plausible AND the selection requires judgment on wording, scope, priority, or fit → STOP. Spawn at least one agent via the Task tool (or an agent panel per the relevant procedure — e.g., optimize.md § 4b, § 5b) to supply independent input.
4. Read the agent findings. Where agents agree → proceed with the agreed alternative. Where agents disagree → default to the safer/conservative alternative.
5. IF an agent was required but skipped → STOP. Report to user: "Agent consultation skipped for a non-obvious decision. Respawn with agent input before proceeding."

CHECKPOINT — Persona Assignment Gate:

1. Before writing or editing any AGENT.md file, extract the proposed persona string from the agent frontmatter.
2. Read references/agents-personas.md § "Persona assignment rules" to confirm the persona fits the agent's stated role (task, scope, perspective).
3. Glob ALL agent-file forms and read each file's persona field: .claude/skills/*/agents/*.md (flat-file agents like agents/failure-triage.md), .claude/skills/*/agents/*/AGENT.md (subdirectory-form agents like agents/optimize-diff-auditor/AGENT.md), AND .claude/agents/*.md (project-registered agents — dereference symlinks and dedupe by resolved target, since registration symlinks point back into the skill forms). Union the globs — agents may live in any form, and dropping one form silently drops uniqueness coverage for that slice of the population.
4. IF the proposed persona string matches any existing persona verbatim OR paraphrases one already in use (same core identity, different words) → STOP. Report: "Persona conflicts with [path]: '[existing persona]'. Choose a different persona."
5. IF no duplicate AND the persona fits the role (step 2 passed) → CONTINUE to write the AGENT.md.
6. There is no shipped backstop hook for this gate (skill-builder does not distribute pre-built hook scripts; cross-platform compatibility takes precedence). The CHECKPOINT above IS the enforcement — follow it literally during authorship. Users who want a deterministic backstop on their own systems can generate one via /skill-builder hooks dev skill-builder --execute, which builds an OS-appropriate hook locally without shipping it.

CHECKPOINT — Team Research Assistant Gate:

1. Detect team deployment: the procedure invokes TeamCreate, uses language like "Spawn teammates", or explicitly assembles multiple parallel agents under one task.
2. IF detected → read references/agents-teams.md § "Individual vs. team routing" for the allowed research-assistant tool list (read-only reference tools).
3. Enumerate the planned team members and their personas. IF none are labeled as the research assistant → STOP. Add a research-assistant team member with the read-only reference toolset from step 2 before spawning.
4. IF a research assistant is present → confirm its allowed-tools contains ONLY read-only reference tools. Strip any write or side-effect tools from the research assistant before spawn.
5. After spawn, surface to other team members: "Research assistant '[persona]' is available for read-only reference queries. Route lookups through the assistant rather than duplicating research."
6. IF a team is deployed without a research assistant (step 3 skipped) → STOP. Report: "Team deployment blocked — no research assistant in team composition."

CHECKPOINT — Source-First Ordering Gate (fires when dev_mode == true):

1. Maintainer mode detection: does ${CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR}/skill-builder/SKILL.md exist?
   • YES → maintainer mode active. Continue.
   • NO → end-user mode. This CHECKPOINT is a no-op.
2. Track per-session state: which skill-builder/<path> files have been edited so far in this session? Maintain a mental ledger of source paths touched.
3. Before issuing ANY Edit/Write tool call on a file under .claude/skills/skill-builder/<path> or skill-builder/<path>:
   • IF the planned target is skill-builder/<path> → CONTINUE. This is the canonical first-pass edit.
   • IF the planned target is .claude/skills/skill-builder/<path>:
     • IF skill-builder/<path> has already been edited in this session → CONTINUE. This is the mirror phase.
     • IF skill-builder/<path> has NOT been edited in this session → STOP. REWRITE the target to skill-builder/<path> BEFORE issuing the call. Edit source first.
4. Reverse-order forbidden: never edit runtime first then "sync back to source." The runtime contains intentional runtime-only content (local hooks frontmatter, sidecars) that must NOT propagate to source.
5. End-of-session check: git status --short -- skill-builder/. Empty when changes were expected = FAIL. Report: "Source-first ordering violated. Edits landed in the runtime only. Reverse order and retry."

CHECKPOINT — No-Distribute-Hooks Gate:

1. Define the EXCEPTION_HOOKS set: { protect-directives.sh, unique-persona.sh, protect-directives.ps1, unique-persona.ps1 } (the two bash originals per the 2026-05-11 directive, plus their PowerShell companions per the 2026-06-06 extension). Every step below applies to all hooks EXCEPT those in this set; the exception steps (1b, 3b) cover the named hooks explicitly.
2. Before adding any hook script under skill-builder/hooks/ whose basename is NOT in EXCEPTION_HOOKS → STOP. The source distribution MUST NOT contain hook scripts other than the named exceptions. Hooks live only in the runtime copy on the host system.
   • 2b. Exception path: adding any of the four EXCEPTION_HOOKS files under skill-builder/hooks/ is PERMITTED and REQUIRED per the 2026-05-11 sacred directive and its 2026-06-06 PowerShell-companion extension. These ship in source.
3. Before adding a hooks: frontmatter block to source skill-builder/SKILL.md → STOP. Source SKILL.md MUST NOT declare hooks. The runtime SKILL.md may declare hooks the host has generated locally; source must not.
   • 3b. Exception path (2026-07-01, maintainer-ratified): the existing inline PostCompact directive-awareness block (a single type: command echo emitting additionalContext, no script file) IS permitted in source frontmatter and ships. It is directive-protection machinery of the same class as EXCEPTION_HOOKS. Any other frontmatter hook declaration remains forbidden; extending or adding to the block re-enters clause 3.
4. Before adding any hook-script entry to manifest.txt (the shared file list consumed by both install and install.ps1) or any fetch line to either installer script → check against EXCEPTION_HOOKS.
   • 4a. If the basename is in EXCEPTION_HOOKS → PERMITTED. The manifest is expected to list these four files (the .sh pair with the hook flag for the unix executable bit; the .ps1 pair as plain entries). Confirm the destination resolves to .claude/skills/skill-builder/hooks/ on the host.
   • 4b. If the basename is NOT in EXCEPTION_HOOKS → STOP. Adding the manifest entry or fetch line violates the directive.
5. Hooks ARE permitted in the runtime copy (.claude/skills/skill-builder/hooks/) and in runtime SKILL.md frontmatter, but only when generated on the host system via /skill-builder hooks <skill> --execute or maintained by hand by the host operator. The two EXCEPTION_HOOKS additionally arrive via the installers' manifest-driven fetch. Runtime hooks NOT in EXCEPTION_HOOKS never propagate back to the source distribution.
6. IF a workflow proposes shipping a hook NOT in EXCEPTION_HOOKS via the installers, adding non-exception hook scripts to skill-builder/, or declaring hooks in source frontmatter beyond the clause-3b PostCompact exception → REFUSE and report: "No-distribute-hooks directive violated. Hooks are made on the host system only — only protect-directives.{sh,ps1}, unique-persona.{sh,ps1}, and the inline PostCompact directive-awareness frontmatter block are permitted in source per the 2026-05-11 exception, its 2026-06-06 extension, and the 2026-07-01 frontmatter exception."

RELOCATED GATE: the CHECKPOINT "Model-Lane Routing Gate" now lives VERBATIM in references/procedures/audit.md under "Sacred-Directive Enforcement Gates (relocated from SKILL.md, 2026-07-01)". It fires during audit (Step 4f). Read references/procedures/audit.md and execute that CHECKPOINT literally BEFORE the trigger runs; nothing about the gate changed except its location.

CHECKPOINT — Integrity-Over-Performance Gate (governs the reconcile command; see reconcile.md):

1. This gate fires for every reconcile finding and for any cross-skill remediation decision.
2. Redundancy alone is NEVER a reason to act. Before reporting or fixing anything, confirm the overlap demonstrably threatens a skill's full completion (selection-shadowing, dispatch-bypass, suppression cascade, mutation race, or a hard name/embed collision). IF it does not → DROP it silently. It is not a finding.
3. No performance/tidiness justification. IF the only rationale for a removal or modification is speed, token savings, deduplication, or "cleaner" — STOP. That is the shortcut mentality this directive forbids. Do not act.
4. No shortcut on judgment. A non-obvious conflict call requires the agent panel (per the Non-Obvious Decision Gate). Skipping the panel to reach a faster verdict is forbidden. Agents disagree → keep both, flag for the human.
5. Directive blocks are untouchable. Any remediation whose edit span intersects an <!-- origin: user | immutable: true --> block downgrades to FLAG-ONLY, overriding its class default. Never reword, reorder, or delete to "resolve" a directive conflict.
6. Deletion is delegated, never reimplemented. A confirmed redundant skill routes through /skill-builder strip (with its BREAKING detection and --confirm-breaking gate) — reconcile never deletes.

RELOCATED GATE: the CHECKPOINT "Creative-Scope Classification Gate" now lives VERBATIM in references/procedures/audit.md under "Sacred-Directive Enforcement Gates (relocated from SKILL.md, 2026-07-01)". It fires wherever a lane suggestion is emitted (audit Step 4f advisories and the Step 4f-setup onboarding). Read references/procedures/audit.md and execute that CHECKPOINT literally BEFORE the trigger runs; nothing about the gate changed except its location.

RELOCATED GATE: the CHECKPOINT "Bespoke Excursion-Agent Gate" now lives VERBATIM in references/procedures/agents.md under "Sacred-Directive Enforcement Gates (relocated from SKILL.md, 2026-07-01)". It fires whenever a lane-pinned excursion agent is designed or its delegation entry is woven into a skill (agents.md Step 4d, and audit's legacy-revamp path). Read references/procedures/agents.md and execute that CHECKPOINT literally BEFORE the trigger runs; nothing about the gate changed except its location.

RELOCATED GATE: the CHECKPOINT "Audit Agent Model-Assignment Gate" now lives VERBATIM in references/procedures/audit.md under "Sacred-Directive Enforcement Gates (relocated from SKILL.md, 2026-07-01)". It fires whenever audit, or any command running under audit, creates or modifies an AGENT.md. Read references/procedures/audit.md and execute that CHECKPOINT literally BEFORE the trigger runs; nothing about the gate changed except its location.

CHECKPOINT — Two-Brain Harness Gate (governs audit onboarding, /route dispatch, and every per-skill model gate):

1. Audit onboarding asks ONE batched question (audit.md § 4f-setup): the user picks the creative brain and the analytical (everything-else) brain. These two picks are the ONLY model IDs the system ever stamps into gates or minions; everything downstream re-stamps from them.
2. /route is the PREFERRED door, never the only one. At dispatch: resolve ask → skill:function → lane from DECLARED provenance only (frontmatter → Skill→Lane table; the index is a derived cache — never lane-advise on UNCONFIRMED provenance, never write lane authority into auto-generated files) → compare the active model ID (session system-context line, stateless) → at the route door, at most ONE lane interaction per endeavor: an ASK when the dominant hemisphere ≠ the active model (route-ask directive, 2026-06-07; route still cannot switch the model itself, only the human /model command can), otherwise a silent match; a tie/UNCONFIRMED lane resolves to the analytical brain and never asks → dispatch with endeavor coverage recorded (route having assessed the lane this turn is the coverage signal, whether it asked or matched).
3. Hand-running a skill directly is ALWAYS permitted — never treat direct invocation as a bypass to close. The skill's own slim gate keeps the run lane-aware.
4. Per-skill gates are SLIMMED, never stripped. Every lane-declared skill carries the slim gate (resolve lane → compare → advise once → silent no-op when /route already covered this endeavor; headless suppressed; model-lane-gate: off honored). The gate's output is a one-line advisory that names the remedy informationally per the 2026-06-11 named-command advisory directive ("to align, run /model <preferred> and re-invoke; proceeding as-is") — never an AskUserQuestion, never a blocking wait, never a switch performed by the skill (the per-skill gate stays advisory-only; the 2026-06-07 route-ask carve-out applies to the /route door ONLY). IF any change proposes removing a skill's gate without the route-coverage no-op already in place → STOP. Invariant: ≥1 checkpoint on every entry path; ≤1 lane interaction per endeavor (one ASK at the /route door, or one advisory on a hand-run path); 0 switch prompts on every NON-route surface (audit Step 4f, per-skill gates). /route is the one sanctioned door that may ask, and it still cannot switch the model itself.
5. IF a proposed design routes around this gate's invariant (e.g., "mandatory routing" wording that closes the hand-run path, or lane data homed in an overwritten file) → STOP and report the directive conflict.

RELOCATED GATE: the CHECKPOINT "Skill-Creation Ownership Gate" now lives VERBATIM in references/procedures/route.md under "Sacred-Directive Enforcement Gates (relocated from SKILL.md, 2026-07-01)". It fires on /route's no-match path and any route-to-skill-builder dispatch. Read references/procedures/route.md and execute that CHECKPOINT literally BEFORE the trigger runs; nothing about the gate changed except its location.

CHECKPOINT — Platoon Gate (fires before any minion spawn and during fleet design in agents.md § Step 4d):

1. Name the delegation rationale before spawning. The vocabulary is exhaustive: (a) MODEL-FIT — the step's lane differs from the executing session's lane; (b) CONTEXT ISOLATION — unbiased evaluation requires a fresh context (the text-eval/image-eval pattern). There is NO third rationale. Token efficiency and speed remain forbidden justifications everywhere.
2. IF a proposed delegation is same-lane AND has no isolation rationale → STOP. The step runs in the main session as written (the NON-DELEGABLE list in references/lane-delegation.md is the floor; this clause is the ceiling).
3. Every minion's model: frontmatter carries one of the two ratified brain IDs from the Lane→Model table. Never invent an ID; lanes unconfigured or cell blank → leave model: absent and flag (Audit Agent Model-Assignment Gate applies in full).
4. A minion with all REQUIRES present but multiple valid interpretations returns AMBIGUOUS: <question> — the orchestrator owns the resolution. Under audit (Audit Autonomy Gate): agent panel → conservative alternative or DEFER to the report — never a mid-run user question. Outside audit, AskUserQuestion remains available per Rule 8. A minion NEVER guesses, and INCOMPLETE: still covers missing inputs.
5. Minion spawns within a workflow are sequential in step order; concurrent same-file minions are forbidden until a concurrency model exists.

CHECKPOINT — No-Switch-Prompt Gate (fires on EVERY skill-builder command, embed template, and generated block):

1. Before emitting any AskUserQuestion or end-of-turn question, test: does it ask, instruct, or invite the user to run /model or otherwise change the session model? IF YES → FORBIDDEN. Do not emit it. Replace with a one-line report advisory, e.g. "Lane advisory: <skill> declares the <lane> lane (preferred <preferred>); session is on <active>." Then proceed without blocking. (Per the 2026-06-11 named-command advisory directive, the per-skill MODEL-LANE-GATE's advisory line additionally NAMES the remedy — "to align, run /model <preferred> and re-invoke; proceeding as-is" — naming the command informationally in that one advisory line is not a switch request and stays non-blocking.) EXCEPTION (2026-06-07 route-ask directive, newest-wins): /route's dispatch-time lane preflight (route.md § Canonical Dispatch CHECKPOINT clause 2) MAY ask the user to switch the session model — at most one ask per endeavor, at the /route door ONLY, and route still cannot switch the model itself. Every OTHER surface (audit Step 4f, the per-skill MODEL-LANE-GATE, the high-risk skill-builder advisory, all embed templates) stays report-only per this clause.
2. This supersedes (newest-wins, user-ratified 2026-06-06) the prompting mechanics of three earlier directives: "with prompting, or not" → permanently "or not"; "at most one prompt per endeavor" → zero switch prompts (at most one advisory line per endeavor); "high-risk commands prompt for it" → a one-line analytical-brain advisory, no prompt. The earlier directives' texts above remain verbatim and untouched. (The route-dispatch sub-clause of THIS supersession is itself re-superseded newest-wins by the 2026-06-07 route-ask directive: at the /route door, "at most one prompt per endeavor" is restored as at most one ASK per endeavor — route only. Audit Step 4f and the per-skill gates remain at zero switch prompts.)
3. Configuration questions are NOT switch requests and stay: the audit onboarding question (audit.md § 4f-setup) and the every-audit Lane→Model picker (lane-delegation.md § Lane→Model Picker) ask which model maps to which lane — they never ask the user to switch. The lane system, mismatch REPORTING, lane-pinned agent model: stamping, and excursion delegation are all unchanged.
4. IF any procedure text, embed template, or generated block is found to still request a model switch (grep: /model, "switch", AskUserQuestion options like "switched") → that text is stale; fix the template and reconcile via route embed rather than honoring it at runtime. EXCEPT /route's § Canonical Dispatch CHECKPOINT clause 2, whose /model ask is INTENTIONAL per the 2026-06-07 route-ask directive — it is not stale and must NOT be removed. ALSO EXCEPT the per-skill MODEL-LANE-GATE advisory template (route.md § Step 8c clause 4) and its embedded copies, whose informational "run /model <preferred> and re-invoke" naming is INTENTIONAL per the 2026-06-11 named-command advisory directive — informational naming in a non-blocking advisory is not a switch request.
5. A flag whose only purpose is to force a switch prompt (--model-prompt) is retired; --no-model-prompt is accepted as a harmless no-op for backward compatibility.

CHECKPOINT — Audit Disclaimer Gate (fires at the START of every audit run, including audit --quick and bare /skill-builder, BEFORE any scan, sub-command, or write):

1. INTERACTIVE session → present the disclaimer as a clickable AskUserQuestion widget — the SAME mechanism as the Step 0.2 / 0.3 / 0.4 gates, NEVER as end-of-turn prose — and STOP until answered. This is a genuine two-way branch (Accept → run; Cancel → stop), not an FYI notice; the long, bullet-formatted body biases a literal executor toward narrating it as prose, so resist that: put a short prompt in the question field and carry the four bullets verbatim in the question body, with the two exact options below. (Rendering discipline lives in audit.md § Step 0 clause 1.)

   Disclaimer — acceptance required before the audit proceeds:

   • skill-builder is designed to be used with Opus 4.7 or higher model.
   • However, skills created with skill-builder are backwards compatible with earlier models.
   • Please backup your CLAUDE.md and .claude directory before proceeding. A backup process is available right after this — you'll be asked whether to snapshot it (kept under .claude-backups/, the last 3 plus a permanent first-run baseline). Taking it lets you cleanly uninstall claude-enforcer later and restore your original setup with /skill-builder restore.
   • Accepting runs the audit and automatically applies its recommended fixes; deferred items are listed for manual follow-up. Options EXACTLY: Accept and proceed / Cancel audit. On Cancel → STOP the audit entirely; report nothing was scanned or written.

2. On Accept → write/refresh the <!-- audit-disclaimer: accepted --> marker in references/model-lanes.md (next to the model-lane-setup marker; same update-preserved, per-project mechanism), then proceed with the audit. Acceptance is the run's consent: it authorizes the scan AND the auto-execution phase (Audit Autonomy Gate clause 2).
3. HEADLESS / non-interactive run → IF the audit-disclaimer: accepted marker exists → print the disclaimer text into the report and proceed with the SCAN ONLY — a marker never authorizes writes; the full fix plan lands in the report as would-be tasks (auto-execution requires a live interactive acceptance this run). IF NO marker → print the disclaimer and REFUSE: "Audit disclaimer not yet accepted — run one interactive audit first." Acceptance cannot be assumed or auto-granted.
4. This gate asks about the disclaimer ONLY — it never mentions models beyond the verbatim disclaimer text and never asks the user to switch anything. The sacred minimum content remains verbatim: bullets 1–2 and the LEAD sentence of bullet 3 ("Please backup your CLAUDE.md and .claude directory before proceeding.") are byte-for-byte the 2026-06-06 directive's words. The remainder of bullet 3 (the backup-process announcement) and bullet 4 are machinery disclosure for informed consent — bullet 3's tail announces the Step 0.2 backup offer and the clean-uninstall/restore it enables, per the 2026-06-24 Backup Offer directive. (The backup machinery was merged into bullet 3 on 2026-06-24 at the user's request to remove the duplicate backup line; the sacred lead sentence was preserved verbatim and only the modifiable machinery text was trimmed — see ledger DEC-2026-06-24-companion-gate-inversion's sibling note.)

RELOCATED GATE: the CHECKPOINT "Audit Autonomy Gate" now lives VERBATIM in references/procedures/audit.md under "Sacred-Directive Enforcement Gates (relocated from SKILL.md, 2026-07-01)". It fires on every audit run, full and --quick, Step 0 through completion. Read references/procedures/audit.md and execute that CHECKPOINT literally BEFORE the trigger runs; nothing about the gate changed except its location.

RELOCATED GATE: the CHECKPOINT "Route Dominant-Hemisphere Ask Gate" now lives VERBATIM in references/procedures/route.md under "Sacred-Directive Enforcement Gates (relocated from SKILL.md, 2026-07-01)". It fires ONLY at /route dispatch (route-door only). Read references/procedures/route.md and execute that CHECKPOINT literally BEFORE the trigger runs; nothing about the gate changed except its location.

RELOCATED GATE: the CHECKPOINT "Named-Command Advisory Gate" now lives VERBATIM in references/procedures/route.md under "Sacred-Directive Enforcement Gates (relocated from SKILL.md, 2026-07-01)". It fires wherever the per-skill MODEL-LANE-GATE advisory line is emitted, and wherever its template text is written or refreshed (route embed). Read references/procedures/route.md and execute that CHECKPOINT literally BEFORE the trigger runs; nothing about the gate changed except its location.

CHECKPOINT — Creative-Integrity Gate (fires during audit Step 4c-bis, and whenever any skill-builder command creates or modifies a skill that manages a detect/evaluate/revise creative workflow):

1. Identify qualifying skills per references/creative-integrity.md § Scope (creative lane + evaluator/scrub/voice machinery). IF the classification is not overtly obvious → apply the Non-Obvious Decision Gate (agent input) before classifying.
2. Check each qualifying skill against the Nine Scrub Principles via the Compliance Checklist (creative-integrity.md § Compliance Checklist) — by equivalence: a principle satisfied in the skill's own wording, including inside its own immutable blocks, is SATISFIED; a criterion outside the skill's role is N/A, never a gap.
3. BUILD tier (2026-06-11 second clause — audit builds the missing machinery, additively):
   • Build-into-existing (AUTO): when a qualifying skill's loop leg is DEMONSTRABLY ABSENT — a true absence confirmed by a panel that read the FULL skill, never a mere equivalence-negative — build it: a new scrub-chain reference file adapted per skill from the § Build Scaffolds templates, plus ONE dedicated machine-owned CREATIVE-SCRUB-EMBED pointer region (grounding link only — never gating logic spliced into the workflow body). Equivalence-UNCERTAIN → DEFER, never a competing chain.
   • New-skill scaffold (AUTO on absence — 2026-06-12 install-on-absence directive, superseding newest-wins the declared-evidence precondition): when NO skill in the project performs the evaluator function (existence test signal-based, never name-based, per § Build Scaffolds pre-build guards) AND no text-eval skill directory exists AND model-lanes.md carries no <!-- creative-scrub-build: off --> marker → scaffold the evaluator from § Build Scaffolds (persona + model gates apply in full; lanes unconfigured → model: absent + flagged, never an invented ID). Lane declarations do not gate the build — the precondition is absence alone; the scaffold authors its own lane: creative frontmatter and never touches the project's Skill→Lane table.
   • Pattern-library gap appends (AUTO — 2026-06-12 second clause): demonstrably absent mechanisms from the shipped catalog are APPLIED, never deferred: appended into the machine-owned region of scaffold-generated libraries, or — for hand-authored libraries — into ONE machine-owned origin: skill-builder | modifiable: true appendix region at the end of the library file. Existing bytes never modified; structural fit verified before the write (no parseable fit → paste-ready DEFER row); .scrub-gaps.acked is the sole dedup authority; the append fires only when the skill's evaluator grounds against the full library file (else DEFER — inert-sidecar lesson). Equivalence-uncertain stays silently skipped. Forced upgrade on catalog growth (2026-06-12 third clause): a shipped version anchor newer than what a library was last checked against → the gap comparison RUNS and its AUTO appends APPLY in that same audit (never skipped, never offered); scaffold-generated libraries' machine-owned regions version-sync to the current catalog; the ack sidecar suppresses only slugs whose shipped entry is unchanged — new signs always land.
   • Atomic-or-absent: a build that cannot complete its panel/anchor checks writes NOTHING and becomes a DEFER row. Reconciliation on later audits touches only modifiable: true machine bytes (code-eval-grade user seam); creative-scrub: off frontmatter opts a skill out entirely, and the project-level <!-- creative-scrub-build: off --> marker in model-lanes.md suppresses the new-skill scaffold.
4. HARD FLOORS unchanged by the build tier: a build never rewords, reorders, or deletes hand-authored text; any finding whose remediation would intersect an <!-- origin: user | immutable: true --> block is FLAG-NEVER-TOUCH (quoted verbatim). Voice-dependent gates in BUILT scaffolds (humanity floor) are advisory-only when the project has no documented voice profile — never blocking on non-English or technical content.
5. Scrub-loop non-negotiables (creative-integrity.md § Canonical Scrub-Loop Spec, ◆ items): entry provenance guard; auto-fix limited to MUST FIX + hard-directive flags; atomic fix pass + whole-document echo re-scan; cycle cap 2; best-so-far + divergence abort; humanity floor (text); fixability classifier + palette lock (image); evaluator never triggers regeneration; never optimize toward a detector score. A qualifying skill's loop missing a ◆ item → BUILD it when eligible per step 3, else FLAG with the exact missing safeguard named.
6. Research precedence: research that grows pattern libraries or loop parameters runs on the coding model (2026-06-06 research-precedence directive) before handoff to creative drafting.

RELOCATED GATE: the CHECKPOINT "Companion-Skill Selection Gate" now lives VERBATIM in references/procedures/audit.md under "Sacred-Directive Enforcement Gates (relocated from SKILL.md, 2026-07-01)". It fires THIRD in every full interactive audit (audit.md Step 0.3). Read references/procedures/audit.md and execute that CHECKPOINT literally BEFORE the trigger runs; nothing about the gate changed except its location.

RELOCATED GATE: the CHECKPOINT "Audit Backup Gate" now lives VERBATIM in references/procedures/audit.md under "Sacred-Directive Enforcement Gates (relocated from SKILL.md, 2026-07-01)". It fires SECOND in every full interactive audit (audit.md Step 0.2). Read references/procedures/audit.md and execute that CHECKPOINT literally BEFORE the trigger runs; nothing about the gate changed except its location.

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Phase 0: Dev Path Discipline (BLOCKING — maintainer mode)

When dev_mode == true AND ${CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR}/skill-builder/SKILL.md exists (this repo IS the skill-builder source distribution), every Edit/Write on a skill-builder file MUST target the source path under skill-builder/... BEFORE any mirror to the runtime copy at .claude/skills/skill-builder/....

The runtime is gitignored. It gets overwritten on every bash install. Runtime-only edits never reach end users.

Mandatory order — non-negotiable:

1. Edit skill-builder/<path> first (the source distribution under repo root).
2. Then mirror the same change to .claude/skills/skill-builder/<path> so the running session matches source. The mirror is a content sync, not a wholesale overwrite. Preserve runtime-only content the source intentionally lacks: local hooks frontmatter, .directives.sha sidecars, generated artifacts.
3. Never reverse the order. Runtime contains intentional runtime-only content that must NOT propagate to source.

Hooks-in-source exception: Four skill-builder hooks ship in the source distribution — protect-directives.sh and unique-persona.sh per the 2026-05-11 sacred directive, plus their PowerShell companions protect-directives.ps1 and unique-persona.ps1 per the 2026-06-06 extension. When dev mode targets any of these files, the canonical source path is skill-builder/hooks/<name> — edit there first, then mirror to .claude/skills/skill-builder/hooks/<name>. Every other hook file remains runtime-only and follows the original no-distribute rule.

CHECKPOINT — fires before any skill-builder Read/Edit/Write when dev is in the invocation:

1. Maintainer mode: does ${CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR}/skill-builder/SKILL.md exist?
   • YES → maintainer mode active. Continue.
   • NO → end-user mode. This CHECKPOINT is a no-op. Proceed to dispatch.
2. For every planned Edit/Write whose path starts with .claude/skills/skill-builder/:
   • REWRITE the path BEFORE issuing the tool call: replace .claude/skills/skill-builder/ with skill-builder/. The source path is the canonical first-pass edit target.
   • IF the source file does not exist while the runtime file does → STOP. Report: "Runtime is ahead of source for [path]. Determine canonical state before editing." Do not auto-mirror.
   • Hook path exception: paths matching .claude/skills/skill-builder/hooks/<name> where <name> is one of protect-directives.sh, unique-persona.sh, protect-directives.ps1, unique-persona.ps1 rewrite to skill-builder/hooks/<name> (these four ship in source per the 2026-05-11 directive and its 2026-06-06 extension). Any OTHER .claude/skills/skill-builder/hooks/* path stays runtime-only — do NOT rewrite to source for those.
3. For Reads on skill-builder content: prefer skill-builder/<path> so planning grounds on canonical source. Reads from runtime are allowed but second choice — the runtime may be stale.
4. After all source edits land, perform the runtime mirror as a separate, explicit phase. For each skill-builder/<path> modified in this session, replicate the same change to .claude/skills/skill-builder/<path>. Touch only the changed sections; do not overwrite runtime-only frontmatter, hook scripts, or sidecars.
5. End-of-session check: git status --short -- skill-builder/. Empty output when changes were expected = FAIL. The edits landed in the runtime only. Reverse order and retry from step 2.