git:20261026.5ac9638 to git:20261101.8be107b

- only where guidance is missing.

- Inspect nearby skills before editing. Prefer improving the existing owner over

- creating a second skill that attracts the same requests.

- Route from the user’s natural-language request. Complete authorized ownership,

- to invoke separate skills. Helper flags are an execution contract for the agent;

- they are not mandatory manual homework for the user.

- established paths under its own ownership and discovery rules. Inspect existing

- local skills and preserve credits/assets. Setup does not move, namespace, register

- or synchronize target guidance. Creating a local skill is separate authorized

- project work; do not invent a shared registration or migration helper. Keep it out of

- the shared catalog, public manifest and upstream lock. A library improvement must

- be explicitly in public contribution scope; never infer permission from generic

- wording or copy company material into the shared skill tree.

-

- The shared authoring steps below apply to library-owned skills. For local skills,

- follow the consumer's authoring/discovery checks and the ownership guide.

-

- For a durable project check of a critical behavioral property, use the

- [project verification method](references/project-verification.md). Keep its

- models, coverage record and rerun instructions with the target owner, outside

- the shared catalog. A generic prototype request does not require a new skill.

- `orbyn-research` for unknown host/specification behavior; do not assume tools from

- another product exist here. Make examples realistic to Orbyn's architecture.

- in linked references. Do not duplicate model/session/permission policy in every

- skill. Name Orbyn-specific entrypoints `orbyn-*`. A decision principle normally

- belongs in an existing owner's entrypoint and conditional reference; a separate

- skill needs a distinct task trigger and useful result. Keep third-party attribution in source/provenance

- records, never as an inherited active agent identity.

-

- Keep essential instructions and required references usable from disk under the

- [offline contract](../orbyn-setup/references/offline.md). Bundle licensed, pinned

- source text when it is needed; keep attribution/update URLs and source hashes.

- For sources without redistribution permission, author the needed explanation

- independently and label the remaining evidence limits.

- characters), and concise `name`/`description` frontmatter. Keep the description on one line

- for the repository catalog generator. Describe actual routing,

- not a catchall. Include only resources needed to perform the task. Do not add

- placeholder folders, mandatory panels or a new approval flow without a reason.

- Keep source-to-local attribution maps correct; do not delete provenance to hide

- an import. Update affected documentation and remove obsolete competing guidance.

- and the downstream handoff. Check references and role/stack boundaries. Metadata

- and routing inspection are static evidence, not proof of live model behavior.

- external effect or product test still needs applicable authorization. Avoid a

- paid model panel just to validate documentation. Report checks actually performed,

- remaining behavior gaps, changed files and local/committed delivery state.

-

- ## Maintain the public contract

-

- When current work demonstrates a meaningful reusable gap, use the

- [contribution feedback policy](references/contribution-feedback.md). Prepare a

- concrete, sanitized proposal and offer it once at a natural checkpoint. The user

- can approve a public PR, request a local draft or decline. Existing exact-scope

- authority carries through. Silence and local improvement permission do not

- authorize publication. Keep company-only lessons local and continue the main task.

-

- Treat the shared library as an upstream dependency of consuming projects. Keep private product policy and source outside public contributions. A useful skill change alters a decision or supplies a reusable artifact, not just vocabulary. Check expected and adjacent routing cases, then reconcile the catalog and library release through the documented contribution path.

-

- For external skill freshness and source comparisons, use

- [upstream review](../orbyn-upstream-review/SKILL.md). Keep downloaded research in

- ignored `orbyn-references/`, preserve existing local references and adopt selected

- improvements into the owning skill. Do not replace our adaptations with an

- upstream collection or advance an import pin after a review-only change.

-

- ## Evaluate a change

-

- For an explicitly selected remembered lesson, use the

- [memory-to-skill handoff](references/memory-learning.md): freeze source revisions,

- write the general correction and synthetic counterexample, and prepare only the

- reviewed owner patch. Keep private records outside Git. Manual/local and optional

- fork-branch delivery reuse the same checks and authorization; neither implies

- automatic learning, acceptance or an upstream PR.

- Use the [evaluation guide](references/evaluations.md) and its versioned suite for

- positive, adjacent, no-skill and outcome cases. Update a case when its contract

- changes; do not change frozen criteria after observing a held-out result.

- Prepared or incomplete trials remain unverified. Helper fixtures test the tooling;

- only captured, reviewed host trials provide evidence of skill behavior. Record

- baseline and candidate results separately before claiming an improvement.

- For an explicitly requested reproduce/fix/PR-feedback execution trial, use the

- [disposable contribution lab](references/contribution-execution.md). Its real

- source/tests/Git and local PR fixture supply stronger evidence than scenario

- answers; they do not qualify a hosted provider or authorize ordinary model calls.

-

- For explicitly requested multi-suite CI or release/capacity exercises, use the

- [disposable pipeline method](references/pipeline-execution.md). Distinguish actual

- fixture tests from generated report records and from live agent behavior. Measure

- resource usage and retain missing/failed attempts; no blanket scale guarantee follows.

-

- ## Audit completeness without inflating the catalog

-

- For a full sweep, inventory every catalog entry and its local support files.

- Record its input, useful result, failure boundary, execution owner and actual

- evidence; distinguish a focused principle from a complete workflow. Essential

- execution must work from the local method rather than a link to a missing skill.

- Add concrete operational guidance where a short summary loses the method, and

- retain concise entrypoints when their linked resources supply it.

-

- Keep only canonical entrypoints named `SKILL.md`. Bundled upstream entrypoint

- text uses `SOURCE.md`, retaining original `source_path`, bytes, hashes and notices

- in the snapshot record. Historical mentions inside that text are source data,

- not installed skills or permission to fetch them. Validate recursive discovery,

- related catalog owners, local files and Markdown heading fragments.

-

- Maintained Orbyn guidance can be independently written while earlier derived

- material retains its provenance. New wording, a renamed title or extra length

- does not justify deleting attribution or asserting exclusive origin. Describe

- original additions and retained lineage separately. A full audit is not complete

- qualification when optional adapters or live behavior remain unverified.

- Before a shared edit, inspect library main, relevant open PR heads/bases and owned

- local diffs. Reuse one canonical authoring candidate and coordinate shared writes.

- Follow the [release handoff](../orbyn-upstream-review/references/release-handoff.md).

- An unmerged candidate is not released main. Targets use the same outer source;

- there is no copied installation or consumer pin promotion.

- When consolidating an owner, migrate incoming links, presets, examples, active

- cases and host discovery together. Preserve old measured suites/revisions as

- historical evidence. A declared catalog retirement maps an old reading-group

- selection to the maintained owner; remove only known owned discovery links,

- preflight both hosts and retain foreign/company content. Preserve incorporated

- source/license records when moving a derived reference into an original skill.