Self-improve: turn lessons into skills

adept skills are portable memory. A lesson written as a skill is loaded by every harness on every future session — not lost when this context ends. When you learn something durable, capture it instead of forgetting it.

When to capture

Capture when the lesson is durable and reusable, not one-off:

• The user corrects you ("we always use X, not Y", "don't touch Z").
• A fix or pattern generalizes beyond the file you're in.
• You discover a project convention the code doesn't make obvious (a build gate, a

naming rule, a required pre-PR step).

• You catch yourself thinking "I'll remember that for next time." — you won't; the skill will.

Don't capture: secrets, one-shot facts, anything already obvious from the code or existing skills. Improve an existing skill before adding a near-duplicate (adept skill list).

The loop

adept skill list                       # does a skill already cover this? edit it if so
adept skill add <kebab-id> --edit      # else scaffold a new one
# write a triggering description + a tight, harness-neutral body
adept sync                             # render to every enabled harness
adept status && adept diff             # confirm it landed clean

Then tell the user, in one line, what you captured and where — they own the memory, so let them veto it. Commit the new skill with their normal review.

What makes a captured lesson good

• Description = trigger. Front-load when it applies so a future agent loads it at the

right moment. See [[authoring-adept-skills]] for crafting the description and activation.

• Atomic. One lesson per skill. If it needs "and also…", it's two skills.
• Reason, not just rule. "Use sentinel errors so callers can errors.Is" beats "use

sentinel errors" — the why survives refactors the rule wouldn't.

Confirm before you persist

Capturing is an outward, durable act: it changes how every future session behaves. Surface what you're about to write and let the user confirm — don't silently rewrite the project's shared memory. See [[using-adept]] for the surrounding CLI.