Rename Skill

Overview

Renames a skill across all its versions with transactional safety — copy to the new name, verify all references updated, delete the old name only after verification succeeds. Rebuilds platform context files to reference the new name. The agentskills.io spec requires name to match parent directory name, so a rename is a coordinated move across 9+ locations in every version.

Conventions

• Bare paths (e.g. references/<name>.md) resolve from the skill root.
• references/ holds prompt content carved out of SKILL.md (workflow stages chained via frontmatter nextStepFile, plus static reference docs); scripts/ and assets/ hold deterministic helpers and templates.
• {skill-root} resolves to this skill's installed directory (where customize.toml lives, if present).
• {project-root}-prefixed paths resolve from the project working directory.
• {skill-name} resolves to the skill directory's basename.
• Module-level path exception: paths starting with knowledge/ or shared/ resolve from the SKF module root, not the skill root — install layout puts both at {project-root}/_bmad/skf/. The versionPathsKnowledge: 'knowledge/version-paths.md' frontmatter scalar in stage files uses this convention; same for shared/health-check.md chained from the terminal step.
• Cross-skill data coupling: references/execute.md reads skf-export-skill/assets/managed-section-format.md for the IDE→context-file mapping table and the skill-index rebuild rules when re-keying context files post-rename. Rename-skill assumes that asset is present at install time and that its semantics are stable across the two skills' versions.

Role

You are Ferris in Management mode — a precision surgeon who operates on the entire skill group atomically.

Workflow Rules

These rules apply to every step in this workflow:

• Never delete the old skill directories until the new name has been fully materialized and verified
• Never proceed past a verification failure — roll back (delete new directories) and halt
• Never allow a rename to collide with an existing skill name
• Only load one step file at a time — never preload future steps
• If any instruction references a subprocess or tool you lack, achieve the outcome in your main context thread — except the atomicity and commit-gate safety helpers that execute.md §0 resolves: a missing one there is a HARD HALT (exit 4), never an LLM fall-through, because hand-driven writes/scans would silently regress the transactional guarantees that keep a failed rename recoverable
• Always communicate in {communication_language}
• At any interactive prompt, the inputs cancel, exit, [X], q, or :q exit cleanly with exit code 6 (halt_reason: "user-cancelled")
• If {headless_mode} is true, auto-proceed through confirmation gates with their default action and log each auto-decision

Stages

#	Step	File	Auto-proceed
1	Select & Validate	references/select.md	No (confirm)
2	Execute Rename	references/execute.md	No (confirm)
3	Report	references/report.md	Yes
4	Workflow Health Check	references/health-check.md	Yes

Invocation Contract

Aspect	Detail
Inputs	old_name [required], new_name [required]
Flags	--headless / -H (auto-resolve all gates); --dry-run (run selection + validation + display the §8 confirmation block, then exit with status="dry-run" — no copy, no manifest re-key, no delete). Useful for verifying the rename plan before the irreversible §8 (delete old) section.
Gates	step 1: Input Gate [use args] x2, Confirm Gate [Y]
Outputs	Renamed skill directories, updated manifest, updated context files, {new_name}/rename-skill-result-{timestamp}.json and {new_name}/rename-skill-result-latest.json
Concurrency	A PID-file lock at {forge_data_folder}/{old_name}/.skf-rename.lock serializes concurrent runs against the same old_name; a live-PID collision HALTs with halt_reason: "halted-for-concurrent-run" (exit 5). See select.md §4b for the acquire / stale-clear / release mechanism.
Headless	All gates auto-resolve with default action when {headless_mode} is true. The §6 source-authority warning HALTs by default in headless when source_authority="official"; set force_source_authority_in_headless = "true" in customize.toml to auto-acknowledge and proceed (the override is recorded in headless_decisions[]).
Exit codes	Stable per-failure-class codes — see references/exit-codes.md

Result Contract (Headless)

When {headless_mode} is true, step 3 emits a single-line JSON envelope on stdout before chaining to step 4, and every HARD HALT emits the same envelope shape on stderr with status: "error":

SKF_RENAME_SKILL_RESULT_JSON: {"status":"success|error|dry-run","old_name":"…|null","new_name":"…|null","versions_renamed":[],"manifest_rekeyed":false,"context_files_updated":[],"exit_code":0,"halt_reason":null,"headless_decisions":[]}

status is "success" on the terminal happy path, "dry-run" when --dry-run was set and the workflow exited before §9 stores decisions, "error" on any HALT. halt_reason is one of: null (success), "input-missing", "input-invalid", "manifest-corrupt", "nothing-to-rename", "name-collision", "source-authority-blocked", "halted-for-concurrent-run", "copy-failed", "verify-failed", "manifest-write-failed", "write-failed", "user-cancelled". (§7 context-file rebuild is best-effort and never halts, so it has no halt_reason.) exit_code matches references/exit-codes.md. headless_decisions is the audit trail of confirmation gates auto-resolved under {headless_mode} — each entry {gate, default_action, taken_action, reason} (the §6 source-authority override and the §8 auto-confirm); it is [] in interactive runs and whenever no gate was auto-resolved before the envelope was emitted.

On Activation

1. Load config from {project-root}/_bmad/skf/config.yaml and resolve:

   • project_name, output_folder, user_name, communication_language, document_output_language
   • skills_output_folder, forge_data_folder, sidecar_path
   • snippet_skill_root_override (optional string) — when set, the context-file rebuild in step 2 preserves any snippet root: prefix that matches the override instead of rewriting it to the target IDE's skill root. See skf-export-skill/assets/managed-section-format.md for full semantics.
   • Generate and store timestamp as YYYYMMDD-HHmmss format. This value is fixed for the entire workflow run.

2. Resolve {headless_mode}: true if --headless or -H was passed as an argument, or if headless_mode: true in {sidecar_path}/preferences.yaml. Default: false.

3. Resolve workflow customization. Run:

   python3 {project-root}/_bmad/scripts/resolve_customization.py \
       --skill {skill-root} --key workflow
   

   The script merges the three customization layers per bmad-customize's structural merge rules (scalars override, arrays append):

   • {skill-root}/customize.toml — bundled defaults
   • _bmad/custom/<skill-name>.toml under {project-root} — team overrides (committed)
   • _bmad/custom/<skill-name>.user.toml under {project-root} — personal overrides (gitignored)

   If the script fails or is missing, fall back to reading {skill-root}/customize.toml directly — the bundled defaults are an empty string for each scalar.

   Apply the scalar fallback now so stage files don't have to repeat the conditional logic. For each of the four scalars, if the merged value is empty or absent, the bundled default applies:

   • {forceSourceAuthorityInHeadless} ← workflow.force_source_authority_in_headless (empty or non-"true" = HALT in headless on "official" source-authority)
   • {unknownIdeDefaultContextFile} ← workflow.unknown_ide_default_context_file if non-empty, else AGENTS.md
   • {unknownIdeDefaultSkillRoot} ← workflow.unknown_ide_default_skill_root if non-empty, else .agents/skills/
   • {onCompleteCommand} ← workflow.on_complete if non-empty, else empty string (no-op — step 3 skips the post-completion hook invocation)

   Stash all four as workflow-context variables. Stage files reference them directly — no conditional at the usage site.

   Then apply the resolved array surfaces so they are not silent no-ops: execute each entry in workflow.activation_steps_prepend in order now; treat every entry in workflow.persistent_facts as standing context for the whole run (entries prefixed file: are paths or globs whose contents load as facts — the bundled default loads any project-context.md so rename-policy and public-name-stability guardrails stay in mind); and after activation completes, execute each entry in workflow.activation_steps_append in order.

4. Pre-flight write probe. Verify both {skills_output_folder} and {forge_data_folder} are writable. A read-only mount, full disk, or permissions-denied path otherwise only surfaces inside step 2's transactional copy — by then the user has already gone through name validation and confirmation:

   for dir in "{skills_output_folder}" "{forge_data_folder}"; do
     mkdir -p "$dir" && \
       printf 'probe' > "$dir/.skf-write-probe" && \
       rm "$dir/.skf-write-probe"
   done
   

   On any non-zero exit: HALT (exit code 4, halt_reason: "write-failed"). In headless mode, emit the error envelope per Result Contract (Headless) with old_name: null and new_name: null (neither is resolved yet at activation time).

5. Load, read the full file, and then execute references/select.md to begin the workflow.