skills-cleanup

name	skills-cleanup
description	How to clean up duplicate/untracked skills in the skills repo
tags	["skills","maintenance","cleanup"]

Skills Repo Cleanup

Key Facts

• Skills repo: ~/.hermes/skills/ (git: $SKILLS_REPO)
• Automated skill creation nudge is disabled (creation_nudge_interval: 0 in config.yaml)
• Agent scans ~/.hermes/skills/ and skills.external_dirs (currently empty) — nothing else
• Archive of removed duplicates/untracked skills: ~/.hermes/skills-archive/

How Duplicates Happen

• The agent's automated skill creator places new skills in ~/.hermes/skills/<category>/<name>/
• It picks category based on the LLM's judgment — no strict enumeration of valid categories
• This creates duplicates when skills already exist under a different canonical category in the git repo

Cleanup Workflow

1. Compare local untracked files (git status) against remote (git ls-tree -r --name-only origin/main)
2. Identify duplicates (same skill name, different category) and local-only skills
3. Move duplicates to ~/.hermes/skills-archive/ (recoverable)
4. For genuinely new local-only skills worth keeping: branch, commit, PR
5. The repo owner merges — never push to main directly

Preserving Dirty Runtime Checkout Before Switching Branches

Do not do cleanup or PR work directly in the runtime checkout (~/.hermes/skills). Preserve first, then move the review work into a project worktree:

cd ~/projects/skills
git fetch origin main
BRANCH="wip/preserve-skills-$(date +%Y%m%d)"
git worktree add ~/projects/_worktrees/$BRANCH -b "$BRANCH" origin/main

Copy or patch only the intentional skill changes into the worktree. Exclude generated/runtime state (.usage.json, .usage.json.lock, .curator_state, .curator_backups/, temporary reports, moved-file markers). Before committing, inspect git diff --name-status and stage explicit files rather than blanket-adding the runtime checkout.

For longer cleanup/review checklists, see references/runtime-skills-preservation.md and references/runtime-snapshot-pr-review.md.

Public Repo Review Checklist (for cleanup PRs)

Before pushing, scan for violations (this repo is PUBLIC):

grep -rnE '(personal-email@example\.com|PRIVATE_DOMAIN|ACCOUNT_ID|srv-[a-z0-9]{10,}|evg-[a-z0-9]{10,}|AuthKey_[A-Z0-9]+|\+1[0-9]{10}|password in)' --include="*.md" --include="*.py" --include="*.sh" .

Critical rules:

• 500-line limit: Never delete a references/ file and inline into SKILL.md if result exceeds 500 lines. Restore the reference file.
• No README.md inside skill directories (per AGENTS.md)
• Env var placeholders: Use $VAR_NAME for all account-specific values. See ../../coding/babysit-pr/references/public-repo-redaction.md for the full list.
• Product domains are OK: public product domains are fine. Personal emails, account IDs, infra IDs, private domains, and operational IDs are not.

Categories That Were Full Duplicates (removed 2026-05-01)

github/, autonomous-ai-agents/, software-development/, mlops/, media/, mcp/, leisure/, red-teaming/, note-taking/, email/, smart-home/, gaming/, analytics/, diagramming/, domain/, feeds/, gifs/, inference-sh/, dogfood/

Inherited Client Examples

Skills templated from a client project often have dead examples baked in (wrong audience, irrelevant copy, client-specific search queries). These mislead creative generation. Load references/inherited-client-examples.md for detection, cleanup rules, and a worked example.

Category Reorganization

When the user says the repo has "too many top-level folders" or categories feel off, load references/category-reorganization.md for the full audit and move playbook. Covers bloat detection, merging overlapping categories, moving project-specific skills to internal/, and keeping README.md and CLAUDE.md in sync.

README Maintenance

When adding, removing, or renaming skills, update the README.md category table with accurate skill counts.