Guidance routes "add a skill" to two different skills

[shunk031]

Context

Two guidance files route the same request to two different skills.

home/dot_config/exact_agents/AGENTS.md, which is the user-level guidance every session loads:

Use the shunk031-manage-agent-guidance skill when adding, moving, or deleting persistent instructions, agent wrappers, or skills.

The root AGENTS.md of this repository:

When asked to add, change, or remove a skill, use the shunk031-manage-public-private-skills skill to decide which repository owns it before editing anything.

shunk031-manage-agent-guidance also claims skills in its own description, in the words "or repo-local skills". Neither skill mentions the other, so nothing resolves the overlap at the point where an agent has to choose.

Why this matters

The two skills answer different questions and both answers are needed, in order. manage-agent-guidance decides which scope a rule belongs to, including whether it should become a skill at all. manage-public-private-skills decides which repository owns that skill, how it is written, and how a merged change reaches a machine. Sending "add a skill" to only the first one skips the repository-ownership question, which is the one that has gone wrong before: skill content no longer lives in either dotfiles repository, and work aimed there cannot land.

shunk031/dotfiles#673 is a concrete instance. It was branched before #666 removed the in-tree skills and it edited scripts/doc_slop_review.py, a path this repository no longer holds. It was closed as unmergeable.

A related stale claim

shunk031-manage-agent-guidance still describes the superseded layout:

Keep repo-local skills at .agents/skills/<name>/SKILL.md and expose them to Claude with a relative .claude/skills symlink when required.

shunk031-manage-public-private-skills states the opposite, that neither dotfiles repository holds skill content, and #666 removed the tree. Fixing that line belongs with the routing fix, in shunk031/skills.

Acceptance criteria

• User-level guidance sends rule-placement and scope questions to shunk031-manage-agent-guidance, and skill-ownership and skill-authoring questions to shunk031-manage-public-private-skills, in that order and without either claiming the other's half.
• The root AGENTS.md does not contradict the user-level file.
• shunk031-manage-agent-guidance stops claiming skills in its description and drops the repo-local layout line, in a shunk031/skills pull request.
• Guidance evaluation cases cover the routing choice, so a future edit that re-merges the two cannot pass silently.

Note

A draft of the user-level change is in the local worktree ~/.local/share/chezmoi-worktrees/agent-guidance-ownership, on branch fix/agent-guidance-ownership. It is uncommitted and unpushed.

[shunk031]

The shunk031/skills half is tracked at shunk031/skills#31, which covers the same skill's drifted validation rules and the missing assertion. Both edit skills/shunk031-manage-agent-guidance/SKILL.md.