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Sync only the skills this CLI owns to basecamp/skills - #434

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sync-skills-ownership
Sep 14, 2026
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jeremy merged 6 commits into
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sync-skills-ownership

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@jeremy jeremy commented Sep 13, 2026

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The bug

basecamp/skills is shared by several CLIs, and each one's scripts/sync-skills.sh recorded what it published in the same file, .managed-skills, then deleted every name in that file its own skills/ tree lacked. So the CLIs took turns deleting each other's skills (basecamp/skills#5):

Today the distribution repo holds only the basecamp skills; HEY's is gone.

The fix

  • Per-source manifest. Each publisher owns .managed-skills.<source> at the target root (basecamp-cli, hey-cli, …), one sorted name per line, and reads only its own file to decide what to remove.
  • Removal only within own manifest, with a cross-manifest guard. skills/<name> is removed only when this source's manifest lists it, this release no longer ships it, and no other .managed-skills.* claims it. Two publishers claiming one name is a collision to settle upstream, so it is warned about and left alone. Nothing else ever calls rm -rf on the target besides the per-skill refresh (a name in this source's set, immediately re-copied).
  • No first-run fallback. A target with no .managed-skills.<source> yet removes nothing and writes the manifest from the current set. The old "no manifest, so everything under skills/ is ours" fallback is gone — it is exactly what deleted the sibling's skills.
  • Legacy tombstone. .managed-skills stays but is rewritten on every run as a comment-only file. The pre-fix script validates each line against ^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+$ and skips the rest, so a CLI still running it deletes nothing; had the file been deleted instead, that script's fallback would have claimed every skills/*. This is what makes the rollout order across CLIs irrelevant.
  • SYNC_SOURCE overrides the source name (bot identity and commit message derive from it) so the test can play the other CLI; SKILLS_REPO_URL says where the target is cloned from and pushed to (the test points it at a local bare repository). The script always clones the target fresh and pushes only the commit it made — there is no checkout to hand it. DRY_RUN=local previews the copy offline against an empty tree; DRY_RUN=remote clones the real target and stops before committing. The copy filter is unchanged.

The script is byte-identical to the shared CLI seed's (seed/scripts/sync-skills.sh in basecamp/cli#78 at 1df3bfe5) apart from the CLI_NAME default, which is what carries the per-repo SYNC_SOURCE. The seed went three steps beyond the design, and this PR carries them:

  • Publish-side guard. The sync refuses outright (before touching anything) to publish a name another source's manifest holds, not only to delete one.
  • Fetch-first retry. A rejected push — fetch first on a depth-1 clone (the old non-fast-forward match never fires there) or non-fast-forward — drops the stale commit, resets to the remote's new tip and applies the whole sync again, collision guard included, before pushing once more; no rebase of decisions made against a stale tree.
  • Hygiene. SYNC_SOURCE and DRY_RUN are validated, and the token reaches git as a github.com-scoped http.extraheader in a private mode-600 GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL instead of the clone URL or an insteadOf rewrite (which git expands into git-remote-https's argv), so it appears in neither argv nor the remote URL.
  • The script is now identical to basecamp-cli's apart from the default source name (basecamp-cli's gains SKILLS_SOURCE, which this one already had). The pre-existing tests/e2e/sync_skills.bats stays (default skills/ discovery from the working directory is the one contract the seed test does not exercise), with its two Found … assertions adapted to the script's new line.
  • Latest-release guard on the release-time job. The sync-skills job in release.yml now makes the check the manual Sync skills workflow already makes — the tag must be the repository's latest stable release — so an older release whose run stalls, or whose failed sync is rerun after a newer release has shipped, skips the sync instead of rolling basecamp/skills back. The concurrency group serialises the syncs but never ordered them.

Migration walkthrough

A local bare clone of basecamp/skills main as of today as the target (SKILLS_REPO_URL pointed at it, so every clone and push lands there and nowhere else), then the sibling basecamp-cli branch's script run against it, then this branch's script run against the result:

=== BEFORE (basecamp/skills main @ 42716d7) ===
skills
skills/basecamp
skills/basecamp-doctor
--- .managed-skills
basecamp
basecamp-doctor

=== basecamp-cli script (SKILLS_REPO_URL=<local clone of basecamp/skills>) ===
Found 2 skill(s) in skills/: basecamp-doctor basecamp
Cloning basecamp/skills into /var/folders/64/xwfgjgld7f704v23qrmz7zr40000gn/T/tmp.2tEKUmRH55/skills...
Copying skills into /var/folders/64/xwfgjgld7f704v23qrmz7zr40000gn/T/tmp.2tEKUmRH55/skills/skills/...
No .managed-skills.basecamp-cli yet: first run for basecamp-cli, removing nothing

=== Changes ===
 .managed-skills                 |  6 ++++--
 .managed-skills.basecamp-cli    |  2 ++
 skills/basecamp-doctor/SKILL.md |  1 +
 skills/basecamp/SKILL.md        | 16 ++++++++++++----
 4 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)


Skills synced to basecamp/skills (main) from basecamp-cli v0.12.0

=== hey-cli script (same target) ===
Found 1 skill(s) in skills/: hey
Cloning basecamp/skills into /var/folders/64/xwfgjgld7f704v23qrmz7zr40000gn/T/tmp.fSUss8L1TP/skills...
Copying skills into /var/folders/64/xwfgjgld7f704v23qrmz7zr40000gn/T/tmp.fSUss8L1TP/skills/skills/...
No .managed-skills.hey-cli yet: first run for hey-cli, removing nothing

=== Changes ===
 .managed-skills.hey-cli |   1 +
 skills/hey/SKILL.md     | 812 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 813 insertions(+)


Skills synced to basecamp/skills (main) from hey-cli v1.5.0

=== AFTER: find skills -maxdepth 1 ===
skills
skills/basecamp
skills/basecamp-doctor
skills/hey

=== AFTER: cat .managed-skills* ===
--- .managed-skills
# Superseded by the per-source manifests (.managed-skills.<cli>), one per publishing CLI.
# Each CLI deletes only the skill directories listed in its own manifest.
# Kept so a CLI still running the pre-fix sync script deletes nothing: that script skips
# every line it cannot parse as a skill name and only deletes names it can.
--- .managed-skills.basecamp-cli
basecamp
basecamp-doctor
--- .managed-skills.hey-cli
hey

--- git log ---
cb1b346 hey-cli[bot] Sync skills from hey-cli v1.5.0
c5486a8 basecamp-cli[bot] Sync skills from basecamp-cli v0.12.0
42716d7 basecamp-cli[bot] Sync skills from basecamp-cli v0.11.0

So the first hey-cli release after this merges restores HEY's skill to basecamp/skills, and no release of either CLI touches the other's skills again.

Test

scripts/test-sync-skills.sh (the seed's test, unchanged; make test-sync-skills, in make check, the CI e2e job and the release gate) builds a throwaway target reproducing basecamp/skills as the history above left it — the basecamp skills present, skills/hey gone, the legacy .managed-skills listing the basecamp names, plus a README that must survive — and two fixture trees (one with a nested file, a *.go, a dotfile and a dot-directory that must not be copied). It runs the script interleaved hey-cli, basecamp-cli, hey-cli, basecamp-cli, asserting after each run that both sources' skills are present, each manifest lists exactly its own names and .managed-skills is the tombstone. Then: a skill dropped from one tree removes only that directory; a stale legacy manifest listing the sibling's names (a pre-fix sibling having run) deletes nothing; a name listed in both manifests survives with a warning; publishing a name another source owns is refused before anything changes; DRY_RUN=remote shows the diff and commits nothing; the DRY_RUN=local preview stays offline; a concurrent publisher winning the race to origin (a real push into a local bare repo) is absorbed by the fetch-first retry, and a concurrent claim on a name this source ships makes that retry refuse (and the sibling dropping the claim lets the next release publish); a github.com target without a token is refused before anything is cloned; and the commit author is <source>[bot].

scripts/sync-skills.sh is on the sensitive-change list, so expect the gate label on this PR.

The sibling PR in basecamp-cli carries the same change: basecamp/basecamp-cli#708

Copilot AI balanced review requested due to automatic review settings September 13, 2026 00:09
@jeremy
jeremy requested a review from a team as a code owner September 13, 2026 00:09
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Sensitive Change Detection (shadow mode)

This PR modifies control-plane files:

  • .github/workflows/release.yml
  • .github/workflows/sync-skills.yml
  • .github/workflows/test.yml
  • scripts/sync-skills.sh

Shadow mode — this check is informational only. When activated, changes to these paths will require approval from a maintainer.

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Codex Review Summary

This comment shows the latest Codex review activity on this pull request.

Review Status Commit Review trigger
📝 Code Review Completed 2026-09-14T05:10:31.366359Z 6918171 New commits
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🟡 Changes recommended

Active cross-publisher name collisions can still silently overwrite another publisher’s skill.

Get a fresh assessment by requesting another Copilot review.

Pull request overview

Introduces per-publisher skill manifests to prevent CLIs from deleting each other’s distributed skills.

Changes:

  • Adds source-specific ownership and legacy-manifest migration.
  • Adds interleaved publisher and collision tests.
  • Updates workflow and release documentation.

[!TIP]
If you aren't ready for review, convert to a draft PR.
Click "Convert to draft" or run gh pr ready --undo.
Click "Ready for review" or run gh pr ready to reengage.

File summaries
File Description
scripts/sync-skills.sh Implements per-source synchronization.
tests/e2e/sync_skills.bats Tests ownership and migration behavior.
RELEASING.md Documents the new contract.
.github/workflows/sync-skills.yml Clarifies workflow behavior.
Review details
  • Files reviewed: 4/4 changed files
  • Comments generated: 1
  • Review effort level: Balanced

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Comment thread scripts/sync-skills.sh Outdated
basecamp/skills is shared by several CLIs, and every one of them ran the
same sync script against one shared .managed-skills: publish skills/*,
then delete every name in that file that the publisher's own tree lacks.
So hey-cli's v0.1.1 release deleted skills/basecamp and
skills/basecamp-doctor (basecamp/skills@08ef7ea), and basecamp-cli's
v0.10.0 and v0.11.0 deleted skills/hey (728a916, 42716d7). Today the
distribution repo holds only the basecamp skills; HEY's is gone
(basecamp/skills#5).

Each publisher now owns a manifest of its own, .managed-skills.<source>,
and reads only that file to decide what to remove. A skills/<name> goes
only when this source's manifest lists it, this release no longer ships
it, and no other source's manifest claims it — a name two manifests
list is a collision to settle upstream, so it is warned about and left,
and a name another source's manifest holds is refused for publishing.
A target with no manifest for this source yet removes nothing; the old
"no manifest, so everything under skills/ is ours" fallback is gone,
since it is exactly what deleted the sibling's skills.

The legacy .managed-skills stays, rewritten on every run as a
comment-only tombstone. The pre-fix script skips every line it cannot
parse as a skill name, so a sibling still running it deletes nothing;
had the file been removed, that script's fallback would have claimed
every skills/* directory. That is what makes the rollout order across
CLIs irrelevant.

A push rejected because a sibling published first ("fetch first" on a
depth-1 clone, or non-fast-forward) drops the stale commit and applies
the sync again from the remote's new tip, collision guard included. The
token reaches git through a private GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL insteadOf rewrite
rather than the clone URL, and the checkout must be clean before the
sync sweeps it into a commit.

SYNC_SOURCE overrides the source name (the bot identity and commit
message derive from it) so a test can play the other CLI, and
SKILLS_TARGET points the script at an existing checkout instead of
cloning; with DRY_RUN=local it applies and commits but skips the push.
scripts/test-sync-skills.sh (make test-sync-skills, in make check and
CI) builds a target reproducing basecamp/skills as the history above
left it and runs the script interleaved as both CLIs, through a rejected
push included. The existing bats tests keep the source-discovery
contract, adapted to the script's new "Found" line.

The script is the shared CLI seed's, byte-identical apart from the
CLI_NAME default. The first stable release after this restores
skills/hey.
@jeremy
jeremy force-pushed the sync-skills-ownership branch from 0e923e8 to e967fb5 Compare September 13, 2026 00:46
…ards

Mirrors basecamp/cli@966966e (the seed is the source of truth; only the
CLI_NAME default differs here), and picks up the two seed commits this copy
was behind: the remote-URL assert that read every configured URL, and two
comment rewordings — both now moot, since the assert is gone.

SKILLS_TARGET let the script adopt an existing checkout of basecamp/skills.
Every release path clones its own target, and each review round found
another corner of "any checkout" to guard. The script now always clones
into a temp directory from SKILLS_REPO_URL (default
https://github.com/basecamp/skills.git, the token carried through the same
insteadOf rewrite as before), applies, pushes and cleans up, so the only
commit it can push is the one it made. The remote-URL, branch and
clean-tree asserts are gone with the knob; the retry from the fetched tip,
the per-source manifests, the collision guard, the tombstone and DRY_RUN
validation are unchanged.

The test points SKILLS_REPO_URL at a local bare repository and reads every
result back from a clone of its own; the race is staged with a post-commit
hook that pushes the sibling's commit between the script's clone and push.
Mirrors the seed (basecamp/cli#78 at 1df3bfe5). GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL stands in for
the user's global file only. The system config and any GIT_CONFIG_COUNT settings
in the environment still reach every git call the script makes — the race test
injects its hooks path through exactly that — so the comment no longer claims the
ambient environment is kept out.
…release

The sync-skills job's concurrency group serialises the syncs but does not order
them by version. An older stable release's job can reach the sync after a newer
one has published — its run stalled, or its failed sync was rerun later, which is
what the failure issue tells the operator to do — and the script mirrors the
skills wholesale, so that run would roll basecamp/skills back to the older skill.

The job now makes the check the manual Sync skills workflow already makes: the
tag must be the repository's latest stable release, or the sync is skipped with
a warning. A failed lookup fails the job, so the failure issue is filed rather
than the sync skipped in silence.

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🟡 Changes recommended

The Git URL rewrite still exposes the repository token through the remote helper’s process arguments.

Get a fresh assessment by requesting another Copilot review.

Review details
  • Files reviewed: 8/8 changed files
  • Comments generated: 1
  • Review effort level: Balanced

Comment thread scripts/sync-skills.sh

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💡 Codex Review

Here are some automated review suggestions for this pull request.

Reviewed commit: 94175636ea

ℹ️ About Codex in GitHub

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Comment thread scripts/sync-skills.sh
Every case set SYNC_SOURCE to play hey-cli or basecamp-cli, so the one line
this copy of the script changes — the CLI_NAME default — never ran. A last case
runs the script with neither SYNC_SOURCE nor CLI_NAME set and checks the
manifest it writes, the bot it commits as and the summary line against the
source the Makefile expects, hey-cli. A copy left at the seed's placeholder,
or naming another CLI, fails here instead of publishing under that source's
manifest and identity.

Mirrors seed/scripts/test-sync-skills.sh from basecamp/cli@19b52ed.

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🔵 Needs a closer look

It changes sensitive cross-repository publishing, deletion, authentication, and concurrency behavior that warrants final human review.

Review details
  • Files reviewed: 8/8 changed files
  • Comments generated: 0 new
  • Review effort level: Balanced

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💡 Codex Review

Here are some automated review suggestions for this pull request.

Reviewed commit: 6c86472889

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Comment thread .github/workflows/release.yml
… rewrite

Mirrors the seed (basecamp/cli#78 at 0649a4d); scripts/sync-skills.sh stays
byte-identical apart from the CLI_NAME default, scripts/test-sync-skills.sh
byte-identical.

The insteadOf rewrite kept the token out of the outer git argv and the remote
URL, but git expands the rewrite before invoking git-remote-https, so that helper
still received https://x-access-token:<token>@github.com/... as an argument. The
private gitconfig now carries http.https://github.com/.extraheader with the
basic-auth form actions/checkout writes: the helper sees the plain URL, and the
token lives only in the mode-600 file until the tmpdir goes.

The test unsets SKILLS_TOKEN up front: its token-required case points the script
at the real basecamp/skills, and a token inherited from the caller's environment
would have let it clone and publish the fixtures there.

The header now says exactly what the tombstone shields — the sources that have
upgraded — rather than "anyone's skills": a pre-fix sibling still rewrites
.managed-skills with its own names and a second pre-fix sibling still deletes
those, the basecamp/skills#5 clobber confined to the CLIs yet to upgrade.
@jeremy

jeremy commented Sep 14, 2026

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Review threads: 3 resolved (1 fixed, 2 declined with the reasoning in each thread).

Declined:

6918171 mirrors the seed (basecamp/cli#78 at 0649a4d): scripts/sync-skills.sh byte-identical apart from the CLI_NAME default, scripts/test-sync-skills.sh byte-identical — the github.com-scoped http.extraheader in place of the insteadOf rewrite, the test's unset SKILLS_TOKEN, and the qualified tombstone header, the same bytes basecamp-cli#708 landed at 4ec7f53.

@jeremy

jeremy commented Sep 14, 2026

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Bots on 6918171: Codex reviewed it with no findings. Copilot last reviewed 6c86472 and has not reported on 6918171 after 35 minutes, though it reviewed each earlier push within minutes; a re-review cannot be requested by API, so a human can request it from the Reviewers panel if wanted. The diff from 6c86472 is the seed mirror — http.extraheader in place of the insteadOf rewrite, the test's unset SKILLS_TOKEN, the header comment — the same script bytes Copilot approved on basecamp-cli#708 at 4ec7f53. 4 of 4 review threads resolved.

@jeremy
jeremy merged commit 3c40f85 into main Sep 14, 2026
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@jeremy
jeremy deleted the sync-skills-ownership branch September 14, 2026 05:45
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