Install and manage Skills

Find a SkillCopy Anchor Link

barndog skills list

This lists every published Skill you can access, with its origin and current version. Listing never installs anything.

Install a published SkillCopy Anchor Link

barndog skills install code-review --origin team/platform

BarnDog records the Skill's permanent ID in ~/.barndog/config.yaml, downloads its current published version, and links it into your selected harnesses. From then on, barndog sync keeps it on the latest published version.

Disable, enable, or removeCopy Anchor Link

Open ~/.barndog/config.yaml and find the Skill's entry:

skills:
  - kind: api
    id: 20000000-0000-4000-8000-000000000001
    enabled: true

• Disable: set enabled: false and run barndog sync. The Skill is removed from your harnesses but stays selected.
• Enable: set enabled: true and sync again to bring it back.
• Remove: delete the entry and sync. Its links are removed.

Use a Skill from a local folderCopy Anchor Link

You can also link a Skill that lives in a folder on your machine. This is useful for personal Skills or while you are trying something out. Add an entry with a source path:

skills:
  - kind: local
    id: 729b9d5a-4a8c-4aa7-9b8d-975a55ac373e
    source: ./skills/my-skill
    enabled: true

• id is any UUID you choose. It must stay the same once you've synced.
• source can be absolute or relative. Relative paths start from the configuration file, so ./skills/my-skill means ~/.barndog/skills/my-skill.
• The folder must contain a SKILL.md whose frontmatter has a lowercase, hyphenated name that matches the folder name, and a non-empty description.

---
name: my-skill
description: Explains how this team writes database migrations.
---

# Database migrations

...

BarnDog links the folder itself, so your edits show up immediately. A harness may need a new session to reload them. Local folders are never uploaded.

When sync stopsCopy Anchor Link

Sync is careful by design. It stops without changing anything when:

• a Skill can't be downloaded or doesn't validate,
• two Skills would get the same name in one harness,
• something BarnDog didn't create already exists where a link should go, or
• a link BarnDog created was replaced by something else.

Fix the reported problem and run barndog sync again. BarnDog never deletes a Skill folder to make room.

If you edit a downloaded Skill inside BarnDog's package cache, sync notices and stops rather than overwrite your edits. To change a shared Skill, pull it into a working copy instead.