Bot Skills

Skills are reusable prompt modules that extend a bot's behavior, style, and tool-usage guidance. You manage them from the bot's Skills tab, and you can either write them yourself or install them from Supermarket.

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What A Skill Looks Like

A skill is a Markdown file named SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter. At minimum, give it a stable name and a short description.

---
name: coder-skill
description: Enables advanced coding workflows and tool usage.
---

# Coder Skill

You write clear code, explain trade-offs, and use file or command tools when they help complete the task.

Practical rules:

• Use a simple ASCII skill name such as coder-skill, research, or docs-helper.
• Avoid spaces in the name; Memoh uses it as the skill directory name.
• The Markdown body is the actual instruction content injected into the bot runtime.

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Where Skills Come From

Memoh distinguishes between managed skills and discovered skills:

• Managed skills are the ones you create, edit, or install through Memoh. They live under /data/skills/<name>/SKILL.md.
• Discovered skills are found from compatibility locations inside the bot environment, such as legacy skill directories from imported images or older setups.

Memoh scans these container-internal roots in order:

Type	Root
Managed	/data/skills/
Legacy discovered	/data/.skills/
Compatibility discovered	/data/.agents/skills/
Compatibility discovered	/root/.agents/skills/

Within each root, Memoh looks for SKILL.md either directly under the root or inside a named subdirectory such as /data/skills/coder-skill/SKILL.md.

This matters because the same skill name can appear from multiple sources. Memoh resolves those duplicates into states.

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Skill States

Each listed skill source has one of these states:

State	Meaning
effective	This is the version currently active for that skill name
shadowed	Another source with the same skill name takes precedence
disabled	This specific source has been disabled and will not be used

The important mental model is: the skill name is the identity. If Memoh finds multiple coder-skill sources, only one can be effective.

Typical Examples

• A skill you just created in Memoh is usually managed + effective.
• A legacy skill can show up as effective until you create or adopt a managed skill with the same name.
• After you adopt a discovered skill into the managed directory, the managed copy becomes effective and the old source usually becomes shadowed.
• If you disable the effective source, another source with the same name may become effective automatically.

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Managing Skills In The UI

Open a bot, then go to Skills.

Add Skill

1. Click Add Skill.
2. Fill in the raw Markdown in the editor.
3. Save it.

Memoh writes the file into its managed skills directory.

Edit Skill

• Use Edit on a card to update the raw SKILL.md content.
• Editing is most useful for managed skills you own directly in Memoh.

Delete Skill

• Delete removes the managed skill directory for that skill name.
• Deleting a managed skill can expose a discovered fallback source with the same name, making that fallback become effective.

Disable / Enable

• Disable turns off one specific skill source without deleting it.
• Enable re-enables a previously disabled source.

Use this when you want to test a fallback or temporarily remove a skill from the prompt without losing its content.

Adopt

Adopt copies a discovered skill into Memoh's managed skills directory so you can own and edit it from the UI.

Use adopt when:

• a skill came from a legacy or compatibility source
• you want that skill to become part of your Memoh-managed configuration
• you want to edit it safely in the UI later

Adopt is not available once a managed skill with the same name already exists.

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Effective Skills At Runtime

Only effective skills are loaded into the bot runtime.

That means:

• shadowed skills are visible for inspection, but not used
• disabled skills are ignored
• the active prompt only sees the current effective set

In active sessions, the Session Status Panel can also show which skills were used during that session.

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Built-in Skills From The Workspace Template

Memoh ships a couple of built-in skills (such as skill-creator and hooks-setup) as part of the workspace template. These are kept in sync automatically: every time the workspace is bootstrapped or reconciled, the built-in copies are refreshed to the current template version.

Practical consequences:

• Do not edit a built-in skill in place — your edits will be overwritten on the next refresh. To customize one, copy it into a skill under a different name (or adopt it into a managed skill) instead.
• Your own skills placed alongside them are never removed by the sync.
• Template-provided workspace files like AGENTS.md are different: they are created only when missing, so your edits to those are preserved.

Supermarket And Imported Skills

Two common ways skills appear without being typed manually:

• Supermarket install: Memoh downloads the selected skill into the managed skills directory, so it behaves like a normal managed skill.
• Imported / legacy environment: Memoh discovers existing skills from compatibility paths and shows them as discovered sources.

If a discovered skill is useful but you want to fully manage it in Memoh, adopt it.

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Recommended Workflow

1. Start with a small number of focused skills.
2. Prefer clear names and short descriptions.
3. Use Disable before Delete if you are unsure.
4. Use Adopt for legacy skills you plan to keep.
5. Install reusable skills from Supermarket instead of copy-pasting them repeatedly.