Imported from joelhooks/joelclaw (
skills/skill-cleaner/SKILL.md). Install upstream withnpx skills add joelhooks/joelclaw --skill skill-cleaner. Copyright stays with the author.
Skill Cleaner
Use this when trimming skill prompt budget, finding duplicate skills, auditing enabled/disabled skill roots, or deciding which skills/plugins to remove.
This is adapted for Joel's system from Peter Steinberger's agent-scripts skill-cleaner skill.
Joel System Contract
- Canonical joelclaw skills live in the owning repo's
skills/directory, usually~/Code/joelhooks/joelclaw/skills/or a runtime checkout'sskills/. - Consumer skill roots should be real directories:
~/.pi/agent/skills/~/.agents/skills/~/.claude/skills/
- Skill packs should be namespaced symlinks inside those roots, for example
~/.agents/skills/joelclaw-runtime -> ~/Code/joelhooks/joelclaw-runtime/skills. - Flat per-skill symlinks are compatibility shims only, for consumers that still require
~/.pi/agent/skills/<name>/SKILL.md. - External skill packs may live under
~/.pi/agent/git/,~/.pi/agent/npm/node_modules/, or extension directories. Do not copy those into joelclaw unless Joel explicitly wants a curated fork. - Preserve project-local skills and repo policy even when they look redundant. They often encode operational truth.
Workflow
- Run the analyzer from this skill directory or the joelclaw repo root:
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --months 3
Useful variants:
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --no-logs
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --months 6 --max-log-mb 800 --deep-logs
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --context-tokens 272000 --budget-percent 2 --no-logs
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --root ~/Code/badass-courses/skills --no-logs
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --json --no-logs
- Read the report in this order:
Skill Budget: GPT-5.6 Sol-sized context, 2% skill budget, model-budgeted usage, and pre-budget full-list pressure.Description candidates: long descriptions where tighter plain language saves prompt budget.Duplicates: same skill name or near-identical description/body across Pi, joelclaw canonical, external packs, Codex, and project roots.Unused candidates: no recent$skillmention,SKILL.mdread, or explicit skill-use trace in recent Pi/Codex/Claude logs.Root summary: where skills came from and whether config marks them disabled.
- Before deleting or editing:
- Verify the kept copy exists and is loaded.
- Prefer canonical joelclaw repo copies for Joel-owned operational skills.
- Prefer external package copies for third-party skills unless we intentionally forked them.
- Preserve trigger nouns in descriptions: product, tool, action, object.
- Never delete ignored/untracked skill dirs without naming the destination or confirming they are disposable.
Analyzer Notes
- The script mirrors model-visible skill list line shape:
- name: description (file: path). - It applies Codex/Pi-like frontmatter rules: YAML frontmatter only, default name from parent dir, single-line sanitized
nameanddescription. - It follows the common 2% of raw
context_windowprompt-budget heuristic, token costceil(utf8_bytes / 4), then full descriptions -> equal description truncation -> omitted minimum lines. - It searches
~/.pi/models_cache.jsonthen~/.codex/models_cache.json; fallback is 272,000 tokens and 95% effective context. - It scans Joel's normal skill roots by default: joelclaw canonical, Pi user skills, agents skills, Claude skills, Pi git/npm/extension skills, plus legacy Codex roots.
- Extra folders such as project-specific skill roots are included only with
--root <path>. - It realpath-dedupes roots, so symlinked roots do not create false duplicates.
- For duplicate names, it reports description/body similarity and suggests deletion candidates only when bodies are near copies.
- Usage evidence is heuristic:
$skill,Use $skill, and paths likeskills/<name>/SKILL.mdin recent logs.
Output Policy
- Suggest first; edit only when the user asks.
- If asked to apply cleanup, make small grouped commits: descriptions, deletes, config disables.
- Do not delete ignored/untracked skill dirs without naming the destination or confirming they are disposable.
- For broad cleanup, pair this with
skill-reviewand keep the parent agent as the decision-maker. No silent axe murder. 🐀