forge-skillslisted

# Forge Skills — what they are & how to author them A Forge **skill** is the instruction set an AI agent runs for one **pipeline stage** of one project (triage, clarify, plan, code, review, test, fix, release …). This meta-skill explains how Forge executes skills and the standard for writing/customizing them so they run correctly and don't waste tokens. Read it before touching a project's skills. ## 1. What Forge does with a skill (runtime model) - **Pipeline = a status ladder.** Each stage **binds to exactly ONE skill** (`forge_skills_register`). A job at that stage loads **that one skill body** as its instructions — never all skills at once. - **Per job the agent gets:** the bound skill body + a **shared preamble** (status ladder, complexity/priority enums, relation kinds, handoff schema, `branchConfig`, creds-as-pointer) that Forge injects and **prompt-caches** + a check-in bundle from `forge_step_start`. `references/*.md` load **only when the agent reads them** (lazy) — so they cost nothing until needed. - **Scope & shadowing (ISS-388):** global skills are **read-only templates**. A project customizes one by creating a **same-name project skill**, which **shadows** the global for that project. There is no fork/override — just shadow-by-name. `forge_skills_effective` dedups by name (one row per name + `shadowsGlobal`). - **Server-side + explicit sync:** skills live in the Forge cloud per project. Edit = `forge_skills_update` (server) → `forge_skills_push` (signals devic