autoskill

name	autoskill
description	Observe the user's screen via screenpipe, detect repeated research workflows, match them against existing academic-skills, and draft new skills (or composition recipes that chain existing ones) for the patterns not yet covered. Use when the user asks to analyze their recent work and propose skills based on what they actually do. Requires the screenpipe daemon (https://github.com/screenpipe/screenpipe) running locally on port 3030 — the skill has no other data source and will refuse to run if screenpipe is unreachable. All detection runs locally; only redacted cluster summaries reach the LLM.
allowed-tools	Read Write Edit Bash
license	MIT license
metadata	{"requires":"screenpipe"}

autoskill

Requires a running screenpipe daemon. This skill has no alternate data source — it reads exclusively from the local screenpipe HTTP API (default http://localhost:3030). If the daemon isn't running, run() raises ScreenpipeUnreachable with install instructions.

Network access & environment variables. This skill makes authenticated HTTP requests to (a) the user's local screenpipe daemon on loopback, and (b) the user-configured LLM backend — one of http://localhost:1234/v1 (LM Studio, default), https://api.anthropic.com (opt-in Claude), or a user-supplied BYOK Foundry gateway. The skill reads three environment variables — SCREENPIPE_TOKEN, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, FOUNDRY_API_KEY — and uses each only to authenticate to the single endpoint its name implies. No other network destinations, no telemetry, no data egress to any third party.

Overview

Turn the user's own workflow history — captured passively by the local screenpipe daemon — into new skills. This skill is on-demand: the user invokes it with a time window, it queries screenpipe's local HTTP API, clusters repeated workflow patterns, compares each pattern against the existing skills in this repo, and produces a staged folder of proposals the user can review, edit, and promote.

When to Use This Skill

Invoke this skill when the user asks to:

• "Analyze my last 4 hours / day / week and propose new skills."
• "Look at what I've been doing and tell me what's not covered yet."
• "Draft a skill from my recent workflow."
• "Find composition recipes for workflows I repeat."

Do not invoke it for one-off questions about screenpipe itself, for real-time screen queries, or without an explicit user request — the skill analyzes sensitive local content and must stay explicitly user-triggered.

Privacy Posture

• Screenpipe handles app/window filtering at capture time. Install a starter deny-list by copying references/screenpipe-config.yaml into the user's screenpipe config. Sensitive apps (password managers, messaging, banking) are never OCR'd in the first place.
• Raw OCR never leaves the machine. scripts/fetch_window.py pulls data over localhost HTTP. scripts/cluster.py reduces the timeline to app/duration/title summaries. scripts/redact.py strips emails, API keys, bearer tokens, and phone numbers as defense-in-depth before any cluster summary reaches the LLM.
• LLM backend defaults to local. The recommended setup is LM Studio running Gemma-4-31B-it — strong reasoning at a size that fits on most workstation GPUs, and no data ever leaves your machine. Cloud backends (claude, foundry) are opt-in and documented in config.yaml for users who explicitly want them. Detection and embeddings always run locally regardless of backend choice.
• Dry-run mode (--plan) prints the exact timeline that will be analyzed before any LLM call.
• TLS for localhost (optional, for corporate policy): see references/https-proxy.md for the Caddy pattern.

Prerequisites

1. Screenpipe daemon

Either install the official release or build from source. Either way the daemon binds HTTP on localhost:3030 by default.

From source (recommended if you want the CLI daemon without the desktop GUI):

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mediar-ai/screenpipe.git
cd screenpipe
cargo build -p screenpipe-engine --release
# System deps (macOS): cmake + full Xcode.app (not just Command Line Tools).
#   brew install cmake
#   # if xcodebuild plug-ins error: sudo xcodebuild -runFirstLaunch
./target/release/screenpipe doctor   # confirm permissions + ffmpeg
./target/release/screenpipe record --disable-audio --use-pii-removal

First run will prompt for macOS Screen Recording permission. Grant it and relaunch.

2. Screenpipe API token

The local API now requires bearer auth. Retrieve your token and export it:

export SCREENPIPE_TOKEN=$(screenpipe auth token)

(Or set screenpipe.token directly in config.yaml — env var is preferred since it keeps secrets out of version control.)

3. Python environment

Via pipenv from the repo root:

pipenv install httpx pyyaml sentence-transformers

The embedding model (sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2, ~80 MB) downloads on first run.

4. Local LLM (default path) — LM Studio

• Install LM Studio.
• Download Gemma-4-31B-it (or another strong reasoning model; adjust local.model in config.yaml).
• Load it via the CLI for headless use (no GUI required):

lms load gemma-4-31b-it --context-length 131072 --gpu max -y
lms status   # confirm server running on :1234

5. Cloud LLM backends (optional, opt-in)

Only if you explicitly opt out of local:

• claude: set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, flip backend: claude in config.yaml.
• foundry: set FOUNDRY_API_KEY, flip backend: foundry, set foundry.endpoint to your corporate gateway URL.

Architecture

screenpipe daemon (user-installed)
        │  HTTP on localhost:3030
        ▼
scripts/fetch_window.py    → normalized timeline events
scripts/redact.py          → regex scrub (defense-in-depth)
scripts/cluster.py         → sessions + clusters (local only)
scripts/match_skills.py    → top-k vs existing 135 skills (local embeddings)
scripts/synthesize.py      → LLM judge: reuse / compose / novel
        │
        ▼
~/.autoskill/proposed/<timestamp>/        (default; override with --out)
  ├── report.md
  ├── composition-recipes/<name>/SKILL.md
  └── new-skills/<name>/SKILL.md

scripts/promote.py         → user-approved proposal → academic-skills/<name>/

Workflow

The skill ships a unified CLI at scripts/autoskill.py with three subcommands:

python scripts/autoskill.py doctor   --config config.yaml --skills-dir ../
python scripts/autoskill.py run      --start ... --end ... --config config.yaml
python scripts/autoskill.py promote  --proposed ~/.autoskill/proposed/<ts> --skills-dir ../ --name <skill>

0. Preflight with doctor

Before a full run, verify every dependency in one shot:

python scripts/autoskill.py doctor \
  --config academic-skills/autoskill/config.yaml \
  --skills-dir academic-skills

The report covers config (backend choice valid), skills_dir (exists), screenpipe (reachable + authed), and llm (LM Studio serving or API key present). Non-zero exit on any failure, with the offending line marked error.

1. Run the pipeline

export SCREENPIPE_TOKEN=$(screenpipe auth token)
python scripts/autoskill.py run \
  --start "2026-04-17T00:00:00Z" \
  --end   "2026-04-17T23:59:59Z" \
  --config academic-skills/autoskill/config.yaml \
  --skills-dir academic-skills

Proposals land in ~/.autoskill/proposed/<timestamp>/ by default, keeping experimental output out of the skills repo. Pass --out PATH to override.

Internally:

1. Fetch — fetch_window paginates screenpipe's /search endpoint, normalizes events to {ts, app, window_title, text, content_type}.
2. Redact — redact scrubs emails, API keys, bearer tokens, phones from OCR text and window titles as defense-in-depth over screenpipe's own PII removal.
3. Cluster — segment_sessions splits on idle gaps (default 10 min) and drops short sessions; cluster_sessions groups sessions by app-signature and keeps clusters of size min_cluster_size (default 2).
4. Match — load_skill_descriptions reads frontmatter from every SKILL.md in academic-skills/; top_k_matches ranks each cluster against all skills using local sentence-transformers embeddings (cosine similarity).
5. Synthesize — synthesize prompts the configured LLM backend to classify each cluster as reuse, compose, or novel and emit a SKILL.md body where appropriate.
6. Report — writes <out_dir>/<ts>/report.md, plus new-skills/<name>/SKILL.md or composition-recipes/<name>/SKILL.md for each proposal.

Add --dry-run to stop after clustering; this skips the LLM (and the sentence-transformers load), writing only plan.md for inspection.

2. Review and promote

Open ~/.autoskill/proposed/<ts>/report.md, edit drafts in place, delete anything you don't want. Then:

python scripts/autoskill.py promote \
  --proposed ~/.autoskill/proposed/2026-04-17T14-30-00 \
  --skills-dir academic-skills \
  --name zotero-pubmed-helper

promote moves the directory into academic-skills/<name>/, refusing to overwrite an existing skill. Exits non-zero with a friendly error if the proposal isn't found or the target already exists.

Configuration

See config.yaml for the full shape. Default values (local-first):

backend: local
local:
  endpoint: http://localhost:1234/v1   # LM Studio's Developer server
  model: Gemma-4-31B-it

screenpipe:
  url: http://localhost:3030           # or https://screenpipe.local via Caddy

cluster:
  min_session_minutes: 5
  idle_gap_minutes: 10
  min_cluster_size: 2

To opt into a cloud backend:

backend: claude                         # or foundry
claude:
  model: claude-opus-4-7

Composition recipes vs new skills

• compose: the LLM judged that chaining existing skills covers the workflow. The emitted SKILL.md is intentionally thin — frontmatter + a "Workflow" section that invokes existing skills in order. The same agent runtime that discovered the skill can then invoke it end-to-end.
• novel: no combination of existing skills covers it. A fuller SKILL.md is drafted, still following repo conventions (frontmatter, Overview, When to Use, Workflow). The user should always review new-skill drafts before promoting.

Testing

The skill is covered by a small pytest suite at tests/. Each script is unit-tested in isolation with dependency injection (mock HTTP transport, stub backend, stub embedder):

cd academic-skills/autoskill
python -m pytest tests/ -v

Composition with other skills in this repo

The autoskill's embedding index covers all 135 sibling skills. Workflows that look like scientific writing will match scientific-writing / literature-review / citation-management; figure work will match scientific-schematics / generate-image / infographics; slide prep matches scientific-slides / pptx; etc. When a cluster scores high against two or three sibling skills the emitted composition recipe names them explicitly, so the user's future agent invocations use the optimized paths already documented in this repo.