| 1 | --- |
| 2 | name: "reskill" |
| 3 | description: "Team-wide charter and history optimization through skill extraction" |
| 4 | domain: "team-optimization" |
| 5 | confidence: "high" |
| 6 | source: "manual — Brady directive to reduce per-agent context overhead" |
| 7 | --- |
| 8 | |
| 9 | ## Context |
| 10 | |
| 11 | When the coordinator hears "team, reskill" (or similar: "optimize context", "slim down charters"), trigger a team-wide optimization pass. The goal: reduce per-agent context consumption by extracting shared patterns from charters and histories into reusable skills. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | This is a periodic maintenance activity. Run whenever charter/history bloat is suspected. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | ## Process |
| 16 | |
| 17 | ### Step 1: Audit |
| 18 | Read all agent charters and histories. Measure byte sizes. Identify: |
| 19 | |
| 20 | - **Boilerplate** — sections repeated across ≥3 charters with <10% variation (collaboration, model, boundaries template) |
| 21 | - **Shared knowledge** — domain knowledge duplicated in 2+ charters (incident postmortems, technical patterns) |
| 22 | - **Mature learnings** — history entries appearing 3+ times across agents that should be promoted to skills |
| 23 | |
| 24 | ### Step 2: Extract |
| 25 | For each identified pattern: |
| 26 | 1. Create or update a skill at `.squad/skills/{skill-name}/SKILL.md` |
| 27 | 2. Follow the skill template format (frontmatter + Context + Patterns + Examples + Anti-Patterns) |
| 28 | 3. Set confidence: low (first observation), medium (2+ agents), high (team-wide) |
| 29 | |
| 30 | ### Step 3: Trim |
| 31 | **Charters** — target ≤1.5KB per agent: |
| 32 | - Remove Collaboration section entirely (spawn prompt + agent-collaboration skill covers it) |
| 33 | - Remove Voice section (tagline blockquote at top of charter already captures it) |
| 34 | - Trim Model section to single line: `Preferred: {model}` |
| 35 | - Remove "When I'm unsure" boilerplate from Boundaries |
| 36 | - Remove domain knowledge now covered by a skill — add skill reference comment if helpful |
| 37 | - Keep: Identity, What I Own, unique How I Work patterns, Boundaries (domain list only) |
| 38 | |
| 39 | **Histories** — target ≤8KB per agent: |
| 40 | - Apply history-hygiene skill to any history >12KB |
| 41 | - Promote recurring patterns (3+ occurrences across agents) to skills |
| 42 | - Summarize old entries into `## Core Context` section |
| 43 | - Remove session-specific metadata (dates, branch names, requester names) |
| 44 | |
| 45 | ### Step 4: Report |
| 46 | Output a savings table: |
| 47 | |
| 48 | | Agent | Charter Before | Charter After | History Before | History After | Saved | |
| 49 | |-------|---------------|---------------|----------------|---------------|-------| |
| 50 | |
| 51 | Include totals and percentage reduction. |
| 52 | |
| 53 | ## Patterns |
| 54 | |
| 55 | ### Minimal Charter Template (target format after reskill) |
| 56 | |
| 57 | ``` |
| 58 | # {Name} — {Role} |
| 59 | |
| 60 | > {Tagline — one sentence capturing voice and philosophy} |
| 61 | |
| 62 | ## Identity |
| 63 | - **Name:** {Name} |
| 64 | - **Role:** {Role} |
| 65 | - **Expertise:** {comma-separated list} |
| 66 | |
| 67 | ## What I Own |
| 68 | - {bullet list of owned artifacts/domains} |
| 69 | |
| 70 | ## How I Work |
| 71 | - {unique patterns and principles — NOT boilerplate} |
| 72 | |
| 73 | ## Boundaries |
| 74 | **I handle:** {domain list} |
| 75 | **I don't handle:** {explicit exclusions} |
| 76 | |
| 77 | ## Model |
| 78 | Preferred: {model} |
| 79 | ``` |
| 80 | |
| 81 | ### Skill Extraction Threshold |
| 82 | - **1 charter** → leave in charter (unique to that agent) |
| 83 | - **2 charters** → consider extracting if >500 bytes of overlap |
| 84 | - **3+ charters** → always extract to a shared skill |
| 85 | |
| 86 | ## Anti-Patterns |
| 87 | - Don't delete unique per-agent identity or domain-specific knowledge |
| 88 | - Don't create skills for content only one agent uses |
| 89 | - Don't merge unrelated patterns into a single mega-skill |
| 90 | - Don't remove Model preference line (coordinator needs it for model selection) |
| 91 | - Don't touch `.squad/decisions.md` during reskill |
| 92 | - Don't remove the tagline blockquote — it's the charter's soul in one line |