skill-maintenance

Audit and patch SKILL.md frontmatter, structure, and references across local skill collections.

Updated Jul 10, 2026
One-click install
npx skills add https://github.com/timchap/dot-hermes --skill skill-maintenance-timchap
Or copy as Structured Prompt for Agent▼
Please help me install this Agent Skill.
Skill: skill-maintenance
Source: https://github.com/timchap/dot-hermes/tree/main/skills/meta/skill-maintenance
Command: npx skills add https://github.com/timchap/dot-hermes --skill skill-maintenance-timchap

SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION & REQUIREMENTS

What problem does it solve? AI-generated skills accumulate quality drift over time: missing frontmatter fields, truncated sections, duplicate headings, and references to skills that do not exist. This Skill provides a repeatable weekly review process to detect and fix those issues across the user-local skill collection. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Frontmatter Validation: Checks every SKILL.md for required fields like name, description, version, author, license, platforms, and metadata tags. - Content & Structure Checks: Detects orphaned bullets, duplicate sections, trailing whitespace, and hallucinated skill references. - Guided Patching: Applies small fixes via patch operations and verifies each change by re-reading the file. - Use Case: Run the weekly skill-quality-review cron job to scan all skills under ~/.hermes/skills/, patch missing platforms fields, and produce a summary report of passes and fixes. ## Quick Start Review all my local skills for frontmatter drift and structural issues, then patch any problems and summarize the results.

Frequently Asked Questions about skill-maintenance

High-intent search queries and answers about installing and using this skill.

FAQPage Schema
How do I audit SKILL.md frontmatter for missing fields?▼

List all SKILL.md files with find, extract each frontmatter block with sed, and check for required fields: name, description, version, author, license, platforms, and metadata.hermes tags and related_skills. Missing platforms and related_skills are the most common drift patterns.

How to detect hallucinated skill references in AI-generated skills?▼

Compare every referenced skill name in the SKILL.md body against the actual list of installed skills from the find command. AI-generated skills frequently invent references to skills that do not exist, so validate before patching.

What frontmatter fields are required in a SKILL.md file?▼

Required fields are name (lowercase, hyphens, under 64 chars), description starting with "Use when", version, author set to Hermes Agent, license, platforms array, and metadata.hermes with non-empty tags and related_skills arrays.

Should I patch bundled or hub-installed skills during review?▼

No. Bundled skills like hermes-agent-skill-authoring and hub-installed skills are maintained upstream and must be skipped. The review process only applies to user-local skills under ~/.hermes/skills/.

Why do orphaned bullet points appear in generated skills?▼

Orphaned bullets are truncation artifacts that occur when a model's context fills up during skill creation, cutting the last section mid-sentence. Fix them by integrating the content into the nearest section or removing it.