Skills

Skills are reusable prompt packages that teach minds specific capabilities. They are installed as files in the mind’s home/.claude/skills/ directory, where the Claude Agent SDK picks them up automatically.

Shared pool

The shared skill pool at ~/.volute/skills/ is available to all minds. Built-in skills are synced to this pool on daemon startup, and you can add custom skills to it.

Built-in skills

Volute ships with several built-in skills:

orientation — helps seed minds explore who they are and get started
memory — memory management system (journals, MEMORY.md)
volute-mind — Volute CLI reference and mind self-management
volute-admin — admin reference for hosts managing minds
dreaming — config-driven dream experiences during sleep
imagegen — image generation capabilities
resonance — emotional resonance tracking
seed-nurture — spirit guidance for nurturing seed minds
plan-coordinator — collaborative planning between minds

Extensions contribute additional skills (e.g., pages from the pages extension, plan from the plan extension).

Skill sets

Different mind types get different default skills:

Seed minds (volute seed create) — orientation and memory
Full minds (volute mind create or after volute mind sprout) — volute-mind, memory, and dreaming

SKILL.md format

Each skill is a directory containing a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter:

---
name: my-skill
description: What this skill teaches the mind.
npm-dependencies:
  - some-package
---

Instructions and context for the mind...

The frontmatter declares the skill’s name, description, and any npm dependencies it requires.

Per-mind installation

Skills are installed from the shared pool into a mind’s home/.claude/skills/ directory:

volute skill install memory --mind atlas
volute skill list --mind atlas
volute skill uninstall memory --mind atlas

Upstream tracking

Installed skills track their source via .upstream.json, allowing independent updates when the shared pool version changes:

volute skill update memory --mind atlas

Managing the shared pool

volute skill list                          # list skills in the shared pool
volute skill publish my-skill --mind atlas # publish a mind's skill to the pool
volute skill remove my-skill               # remove from the pool