skills-compat

name	skills-compat
displayName	Skills Compatibility Layer
description	Ensures OpenClaw skills.md format works with both nanobot and overstory. Loads skills, registers tools, maps between systems.
version	1.0.0

Skills Compatibility Layer

Description

Ensures the OpenClaw SKILL.md format works seamlessly across nanobot, overstory, and Ollama. Discovers and loads skills, parses frontmatter, builds a unified tool registry, and exports tool definitions in each system's native format.

Architecture

┌─────────────────┐      ┌───────────────┐
│  skill_loader.py │─────▶│ SkillLoader   │──▶ Parses SKILL.md + _meta.json
└─────────────────┘      └───────────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌─────────────────┐      ┌───────────────┐
│ tool_registry.py │─────▶│ ToolRegistry  │──▶ Unified tool catalog
└─────────────────┘      └───────────────┘
                                │
                    ┌───────────┼───────────┐
                    ▼           ▼           ▼
               nanobot      overstory     Ollama
               format       format       format

• skill_loader.py — Discovers skills directories, parses YAML frontmatter from SKILL.md files, extracts tool definitions from _meta.json, returns structured SkillDefinition objects.
• tool_registry.py — Singleton tool registry. Registers tools from skills, MCP servers, or manual definitions. Exports the full catalog in nanobot, overstory, or Ollama JSON-schema format.

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• No external dependencies (stdlib only — uses json, sqlite3, pathlib, re for YAML-subset parsing)

Commands

Discover skills

python3 scripts/skill_loader.py discover --dir /path/to/skills --json

Load a single skill

python3 scripts/skill_loader.py load --skill /path/to/skills/agent-swarm --json

List registered tools

python3 scripts/tool_registry.py list --json
python3 scripts/tool_registry.py list --capability code --json

Export tool definitions

python3 scripts/tool_registry.py export --format nanobot
python3 scripts/tool_registry.py export --format overstory
python3 scripts/tool_registry.py export --format ollama

Register tools from a skill

python3 scripts/tool_registry.py register --skill agent-swarm --dir /path/to/skills

Usage as Python Module

from skill_loader import SkillLoader
from tool_registry import ToolRegistry

loader = SkillLoader()
loader.load_all("/path/to/skills")

skill = loader.get_skill("agent-swarm")
print(skill.name, skill.version, skill.tools)

registry = ToolRegistry.instance()
registry.register_skill_tools("agent-swarm", "/path/to/skills")

for tool in registry.list_tools():
    print(tool["name"], tool["skill"])

nanobot_tools = registry.export_for_nanobot()
overstory_tools = registry.export_for_overstory()
ollama_tools = registry.export_for_ollama()

Skill Definition Format

Skills are discovered by looking for directories containing a SKILL.md file. The frontmatter block (between --- delimiters) is parsed as key-value pairs:

---
name: my-skill
displayName: My Skill
description: What this skill does
version: 1.0.0
---

If a _meta.json file exists alongside SKILL.md, tool names and additional metadata are extracted from it.

Export Formats

nanobot

[{"name": "tool_name", "skill": "skill-name", "description": "...", "parameters": {...}}]

overstory

[{"tool": "tool_name", "source_skill": "skill-name", "description": "...", "input_schema": {...}}]

Ollama

[{"type": "function", "function": {"name": "tool_name", "description": "...", "parameters": {...}}}]