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: bare paths beginning with knowledge/ or shared/ resolve from the SKF module root ({project-root}/_bmad/skf/ installed, src/ in dev), not the skill root; e.g. shared/health-check.md, which the terminal step chains to, and the envelope schema shared/scripts/schemas/skf-rename-skill-result-envelope.v1.json.
• Sibling skills: a path that names another SKF skill's folder (skf-<name>/...) resolves from the SKF module root, and that skill must be installed with this one. On Activation step 1 cites skf-export-skill/assets/managed-section-format.md, the format the context-file rebuild writes.

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
• Never rename a folder SKF did not generate: select.md §4a takes that verdict from the inventory helper
• Only load one step file at a time — never preload future steps
• Every helper is required: select.md §1, §5's validator call and execute.md §0 halt (exit 4) without one, and no stage does a helper's write, scan or check by hand
• 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

Invocation Contract

Headless callers: the inputs, flags, gate map, outputs, concurrency rule and SKF_RENAME_SKILL_RESULT_JSON result envelope live in references/invocation-contract.md, and the exit codes in references/exit-codes.md. Interactive runs do not need them.

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 passes it to assemble as --skill-root-override, so every row's root: takes it instead of the target IDE's skill root. See skf-export-skill/assets/managed-section-format.md for full semantics.

1. Bind the invocation once, in every mode:

• {headless_mode}: true if --headless or -H was passed as an argument, or if headless_mode: true in {sidecar_path}/preferences.yaml. Default: false.
• {acknowledge_official}: true if --acknowledge-official was passed, else false.
• {dry_run}: true if --dry-run was passed, else false.
• {old_name_arg} and {new_name_arg}: the current name and the new name the invocation supplied, as arguments or in a request such as "rename cognee to cognee-ai", each null when absent. select.md §4 and §5 take a supplied name in either mode instead of asking for it.

1. Resolve workflow customization. Run:

   uv run {project-root}/_bmad/scripts/resolve_customization.py --skill {skill-root} --project-root {project-root} --key workflow

It merges the bundled {skill-root}/customize.toml with {project-root}/_bmad/custom/skf-rename-skill.toml (team overrides, committed) and .user.toml (personal overrides, gitignored). When it exits non-zero, prints no JSON or is missing, print one line, [activation/warn] customization_resolver_unavailable: <reason> (<reason>: its first stderr line, not found when the script is missing, no JSON when it printed none). If the resolver cannot run, read {skill-root}/customize.toml alone and use its bundled defaults: the {project-root}/_bmad/custom/ overrides do not apply to this run. In that case keep the reason as {customization_resolver_unavailable} (unset when the resolver ran) for select.md §1 to record once it has created {run_dir}.

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

• {forceSourceAuthorityInHeadless} ← true when workflow.force_source_authority_in_headless is "true" or the TOML boolean true, else false (a headless run halts on an "official" skill unless it passes --acknowledge-official)
• {onCompleteCommand} ← workflow.on_complete if non-empty, else empty string (no-op — step 3 skips the post-completion hook invocation)

Stash both as workflow-context variables. Stage files reference them directly, with 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 every project-context.md under {project-root}; an entry prefixed ! drops each earlier entry it names and loads nothing itself, so an override's "!file:{project-root}/**/project-context.md" turns that default off); and after activation completes, execute each entry in workflow.activation_steps_append in order.

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