`hermes curator status` reported only the skills it manages, staying silent
about curation-eligible skills it can never touch. On a 237-skill library that
meant 112 skills were invisible to every automatic transition with no signal
anywhere — the curator looked broken when it was working as designed.
A skill becomes curator-managed only when `created_by: agent` lands on its
usage record, and only the background review fork writes that marker. Two
populations therefore never qualify: records written before the marker existed
(no key at all, authorship unknowable) and every foreground
`skill_manage(create)` (unset by design — those skills belong to the user).
- skill_usage: `list_unmanaged_skill_names()` / `unmanaged_report()` enumerate
the blind spot, tagging each row with `has_provenance_key` so the two causes
are distinguishable. `adopt_skill()` writes the marker on user declaration
and refuses bundled, hub-installed, external, and protected built-ins.
Adoption never resets the inactivity clock.
- curator CLI: status prints an `unmanaged (no provenance marker)` block on
BOTH the managed and no-managed-skills paths; new `adopt` verb takes names or
`--all-unmanaged`, with `--dry-run` and a confirmation prompt on bulk.
- skills_sync: `_backfill_optional_provenance()` matched candidates by
repo-derived path only, so a skill installed at `mlops/chroma` that upstream
later moved to `mlops/vector-databases/chroma` was skipped forever and
`hermes skills repair-optional` could not fix it. Falls back to an
unambiguous name match, still gated on identical content, and records the
ACTUAL install path.
Provenance stays a declaration, never an inference: a high patch count proves
the agent MAINTAINS a skill, not that it authored one, since Hermes edits
user-written skills on the user's behalf routinely. An "looks agent-made"
heuristic would eventually archive hand-written work.
Validation: 347 targeted tests pass. Each new test verified via sabotage run
(revert the fix, confirm the test goes red) — one initially passed for the
wrong reason because the fixture pinned `prune_builtins` off, masking the guard
under test; fixed to force the shipped default on.
72de75c0ab