Skill Placement and Provenance Policy

This document defines where generated, imported, and curated skills belong, how they are identified, and what gets shipped.

Skill Types and Placement

Type	Root Path	Shipped	Provenance
Curated	skills/ (repo)	Yes	Not required
Learned	~/.claude/skills/learned/	No	Required
Imported	~/.claude/skills/imported/	No	Required
Evolved	~/.claude/homunculus/evolved/skills/ (global) or projects/<hash>/evolved/skills/ (per-project)	No	Inherits from instinct source

Curated skills live in the repo under skills/. Install manifests reference only curated paths. Generated and imported skills live under the user home directory and are never shipped.

Curated Skills

Location: skills/<skill-name>/ with SKILL.md at root.

• Included in manifests/install-modules.json paths.
• Validated by scripts/ci/validate-skills.js.
• No provenance file. Use origin in SKILL.md frontmatter (ECC, community) for attribution.

Learned Skills

Location: ~/.claude/skills/learned/<skill-name>/.

Created by continuous-learning (evaluate-session hook, /learn command). Default path is configurable via skills/continuous-learning/config.json → learned_skills_path.

• Not in repo. Not shipped.
• Must have .provenance.json sibling to SKILL.md.
• Loaded at runtime when directory exists.

Imported Skills

Location: ~/.claude/skills/imported/<skill-name>/.

User-installed skills from external sources (URL, file copy, etc.). No automated importer exists yet; placement is by convention.

• Not in repo. Not shipped.
• Must have .provenance.json sibling to SKILL.md.

Evolved Skills (Continuous Learning v2)

Location: ~/.claude/homunculus/evolved/skills/ (global) or ~/.claude/homunculus/projects/<hash>/evolved/skills/ (per-project).

Generated by instinct-cli evolve from clustered instincts. Separate system from learned/imported.

• Not in repo. Not shipped.
• Provenance inherited from source instincts; no separate .provenance.json required.

Provenance Metadata

Required for learned and imported skills. File: .provenance.json in the skill directory.

Required fields:

Field	Type	Description
source	string	Origin (URL, path, or identifier)
created_at	string	ISO 8601 timestamp
confidence	number	0–1
author	string	Who or what produced the skill

Schema: schemas/provenance.schema.json. Validation: scripts/lib/skill-evolution/provenance.js → validateProvenance.

Validator Behavior

validate-skills.js

Scope: Curated skills only (skills/ in repo).

• If skills/ does not exist: exit 0 (nothing to validate).
• For each subdirectory: must contain SKILL.md, non-empty.
• Does not touch learned/imported/evolved roots.

validate-install-manifests.js

Scope: Curated paths only. All paths in modules must exist in the repo.

• Generated/imported roots are out of scope. No manifest references them.
• Missing path → error. No optional-path handling.

Scripts That Use Generated Roots

scripts/skills-health.js, scripts/lib/skill-evolution/health.js, session hooks: they probe ~/.claude/skills/learned and ~/.claude/skills/imported. Missing directories are treated as empty; no errors.

Publishable vs Local-Only

Publishable	Local-Only
skills/* (curated)	~/.claude/skills/learned/*
	~/.claude/skills/imported/*
	~/.claude/homunculus/**/evolved/**

Only curated skills appear in install manifests and get copied during install.

Implementation Roadmap

1. Policy document and provenance schema (this change).
2. Add provenance validation to learned-skill write paths (evaluate-session, /learn output) so new learned skills always get .provenance.json.
3. Update instinct-cli evolve to write optional provenance when generating evolved skills.
4. Add scripts/validate-provenance.js to CI for any repo paths that must not contain learned/imported content (if needed).
5. Document learned/imported roots in CONTRIBUTING.md or user docs so contributors know not to commit them.