Skill Doctor

Use ai-skillet's canonical validator for the supported extended skill dialect to audit local catalogs and installed skill roots, then apply only narrow metadata repairs when requested.

Arguments

• --root PATH: Scan this catalog or installed skill root. Repeatable. Default: current working directory.
• --skill NAME: Restrict diagnostics and fixes to this skill directory name. Repeatable.
• --format text|json: Select report format. Default: text.
• --fix-safe: Create missing agents/openai.yaml files or update mismatched policy.allow_implicit_invocation.
• --dependencies-only: Report only malformed or unresolved skill-dependencies declarations. Do not combine with --fix-safe.

Workflow

1. Require ai-skillet 1.0.0 or newer on PATH, then run:

   ai-skillet doctor
   

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   Append each parsed invocation option and its value as separate arguments, preserving quoted values. For example, --root '/path with spaces' --format json adds two options; use the argument-free form for the defaults.

2. Use JSON when another command or agent will consume the result:

   ai-skillet doctor --root . --format json
   

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3. Run safe fixes only after reading the findings:

   ai-skillet doctor --root . --fix-safe
   

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4. Re-run without --fix-safe after any manual edits.

For a dependency-only catalog gate, run:

ai-skillet doctor --root . --dependencies-only

Findings

• Treat error findings as catalog defects that should block publishing or syncing.
• Treat warning findings as review-required catalog hygiene issues.
• JSON output uses schema version 1 with structured roots, counts, findings, and safe-fix records. Each finding carries its code, severity, path, line when known, fixability, and message.
• Frontmatter validation accepts the portable Agent Skills fields, Claude Code extensions, and repository extensions as one supported union. It reports unknown top-level fields; invalid field, item, and metadata-value types; invalid enumerated values; and agent or background used without context: fork.
• Explicit disable-model-invocation: false and user-invocable: true restate the effective defaults and are accepted without findings.
• Prompt-hygiene warnings are advisory and never auto-fix: stale model pins, oversized unconditional Markdown references, conflicting requirement/prohibition language, and missing completion evidence.
• Coordination-exemption errors are report-only: coordination: exempt must be paired with the catalog's canonical coordination-exempt sentence in ordinary Markdown prose. Inline code, fenced or indented code, blockquotes, and headed Example or Examples sections do not count as declarations. Neither side is repaired by --fix-safe.
• Dependency errors reject non-array, empty, non-string, duplicate, malformed, incorrectly ordered, self-referential, or unresolved local declarations. External ORG/REPO#SKILL identifiers are shape-checked without network access.
• Metadata, OpenAI policy, coordination, resource, README, prompt-hygiene, and CLI-version checks remain available outside --dependencies-only.
• Use path and line from JSON output for precise follow-up edits.

Safe Fix Policy

--fix-safe may only:

• Create a missing agents/openai.yaml with policy.allow_implicit_invocation derived from SKILL.md.
• Update an existing allow_implicit_invocation boolean when it disagrees with disable-model-invocation.

Each permitted repair is staged and atomically renamed into place, preserving the target's permissions for updates. A failed safe fix exits 3 without partially rewriting its target.

--fix-safe does not rewrite frontmatter, descriptions, README rows, references/version.txt, or relative links. Unknown fields, invalid types or values, cross-field errors, and coordination declarations are report-only. Make those edits manually and verify with a fresh audit.

Related Skills

• skill-doctor only audits the roots you pass; it does not search for them. To locate skill installs, duplicates, and cross-references across the machine, use ai-skillet map.

Exit Codes

• 0: Clean, or all requested safe fixes succeeded and no findings remain.
• 1: The audit completed and findings remain; report them as review work, not as an operational crash.
• 2: Invalid arguments or unreadable environment.
• 3: A requested safe fix failed.

User-Facing Output

Keep --format json byte-valid and undecorated. For human output, lead with ### 🩺 Skill Doctor — ✅ clean, ### 🩺 Skill Doctor — ⚠️ review required, or ### 🩺 Skill Doctor — ⛔ blocked for exit 2/3, then show roots and error/warning/fix counts in a compact table. List safe fixes separately from remaining findings. For review-required or blocked outcomes, end with the smallest manual next action; for a clean result, stop after the summary. Keep paths, line numbers, codes, raw findings, commands, and diagnostics exact.