Skill Stocktake

Audits all crucible skills for overlap, staleness, broken references, and quality.

Announce at start: "I'm using the stocktake skill to audit skill health."

When to Activate

• User invokes /stocktake or asks to audit skills
• Forge feed-forward nudges when results are 30+ days stale
• After adding, removing, or significantly modifying multiple skills

Modes

Mode	Trigger	Duration
Quick scan	results.json exists (default)	~5 min
Full stocktake	results.json absent, or /stocktake full	~20 min

Results cache: skills/stocktake/results.json

Quick Scan Flow

1. Read skills/stocktake/results.json
2. Identify skills that have changed since evaluated_at timestamp (compare file mtimes)
3. If no changes: report "No changes since last run." and stop
4. Re-evaluate only changed skills using the same evaluation criteria
5. Carry forward unchanged skills from previous results
6. Output only the diff
7. Save updated results to skills/stocktake/results.json

Full Stocktake Flow

Phase 1 — Inventory

Enumerate all skill directories under skills/. For each:

• Read SKILL.md frontmatter (name, description, origin)
• Collect file mtime
• Note file count and total line count

Present inventory table:

Skill	Files	Lines	Last Modified	Description

Phase 2 — Quality Evaluation

Dispatch an Opus Explore agent with all skill contents and the evaluation checklist.

Each skill is evaluated against:

• Content overlap with other skills checked
• Scope fit — name, trigger, and content aligned
• Actionability — concrete steps vs vague advice
• Cross-references — do crucible: links resolve to existing skills?

Each skill gets a verdict:

Verdict	Meaning
Keep	Useful and current
Improve	Worth keeping, specific improvements needed
Retire	Low quality, stale, or cost-asymmetric
Merge into [X]	Substantial overlap with another skill; name the merge target

Reason quality requirements — the reason field must be self-contained and decision-enabling:

• For Retire: state (1) what specific defect was found, (2) what covers the same need instead
• For Merge: name the target and describe what content to integrate
• For Improve: describe the specific change needed (what section, what action)
• For Keep: restate the core evidence for the verdict

Phase 3 — Summary Table

Skill	Verdict	Reason

Phase 4 — Consolidation

1. Retire / Merge: present detailed justification per skill before confirming with user
2. Improve: present specific improvement suggestions with rationale
3. Save results to skills/stocktake/results.json

Results File Schema

skills/stocktake/results.json:

{
  "evaluated_at": "2026-03-07T10:00:00Z",
  "mode": "full",
  "skills": {
    "skill-name": {
      "path": "skills/skill-name/SKILL.md",
      "verdict": "Keep",
      "reason": "Concrete, actionable, unique value for X workflow",
      "mtime": "2026-01-15T08:30:00Z"
    }
  }
}

Safety

• Never auto-deletes or auto-modifies skills
• Always presents findings and waits for explicit user confirmation
• Archive/delete operations always require user approval

Integration

• crucible:forge — Feed-forward checks stocktake results timestamp; nudges when 30+ days stale
• Evaluation is blind: same checklist applies regardless of skill origin

Red Flags

• Deleting or modifying skills without user confirmation
• Treating the checklist as a numeric score rather than holistic judgment
• Writing vague verdicts ("unchanged", "overlaps") instead of decision-enabling reasons