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., notes from the notes extension, 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