[knihit]

Description

CLI:

• Added install/kiro_cli/skill_pointers.rs: writes a ks-<name>/SKILL.md pointer per skill into .kiro/skills/, built from the staged skill's frontmatter, so Kiro lists every skill by name and description
• Pointer text: call get_skill on the konductor-skills server first (load the tool if it is not loaded yet); read <target>/.konductor/skills/<name>/SKILL.md only if that server is not connected; if get_skill says the skill is not found, stop and do not read the file. The fallback path is absolute because ~ expansion by fs_read was not confirmed
• Every Kiro agent also gets a skill://.kiro/skills/ks-*/SKILL.md resource, added by a new resource-rewrite pass for kiro-cli-v2 and kiro-v3
• install --no-skill-pointers skips the pointers and the resource, removes ones an earlier install wrote, and is recorded in .konductor/no-skill-pointers, so update keeps it. A later install without the flag turns pointers back on. Claude installs ignore the flag
• Descriptions are flattened, stripped of control characters, and cut to 200 characters (POINTER_DESCRIPTION_MAX_CHARS). An unreadable SKILL.md fails the install; a missing or non-string description warns and skips that pointer
• update removes the pointer of a skill the source dropped (manifest-tracked paths only); uninstall removes them all, and the opt-out marker on a full uninstall
• Pointers have their own install phase (skill-pointers) and no longer count as skills in the install summary (a kiro-v3 install of this repo reported 183 skills before, now 101: 82 skills + 19 sop-*)
• Claude harness behaviour and the MCP server are untouched

Tests:

• tests/kiro_skill_pointers_e2e.rs (real binary, scratch HOME): pointers, tracked in the manifest, restored by update, removed by uninstall; every Kiro agent lists the glob; the summary count excludes pointers; --no-skill-pointers survives update, is undone by a plain install, and is cleared by uninstall; update prunes a dropped skill's pointer; no pointers and no marker on a Claude install
• Unit tests for the pointer wording (order, stop on not-found, no ~), truncation, control characters, list-valued description, unreadable SKILL.md, pruning, and the new rewrite pass
• The guard that fails if the real ~/.konductor/installs changes is kept. It watches only that index, so it is a tripwire
• Existing assertions on an agent's resources now expect the added glob

Docs: README.md, cli/README.md (new "Skill pointers" section), docs/user-guide/{reference,agents,appendix/contributing}.md, CHANGELOG.md

Type of Change

• CLI (cli/) change — Rust or Python
• Documentation

Testing

• npm test passes: not run green; two suites fail on main too because scripts/brand-config/lib/constants.js is not tracked
• If cli/ changed: make test from the repo root passes with TMPDIR=/tmp: cli 1810 (1759 unit + 51 integration), mcp 318, shared 76; includes the __dump_schema smoke check
• Live probe, kiro-cli 2.35.0, scratch HOME, install --harness kiro-v3, kiro-cli chat --v3 --agent k-developer --no-interactive: the agent listed 82 ks-* skills, also from an unrelated working directory. Loading ks-backend-review ran disclose_context (the pointer), then tool_load, then get_skill backend-review, and returned # Backend Review. Same listing on a kiro-cli-v2 install with the default engine
• Control: with the ks-* glob removed from k-developer.json, the v3 agent still listed all 82. So for a home install Kiro already scans ~/.kiro/skills; the glob makes discovery explicit and covers other scopes. I did not test a project-scope install
• cargo clippy -- -D warnings and cargo fmt --check pass (rustup stable 1.97.1 with a separate target dir; make lint hits a local clippy/rustc version mismatch). --all-targets shows 7 warnings in files this PR does not touch, the same 7 without it
• New code files carry the SPDX header

Checklist

• My code follows the style guidelines of this project
• I have performed a self-review of my own changes
• I have commented my code where necessary
• I have made corresponding changes to the documentation
• I have added or updated tests that prove my change works

Agents Affected

• All agents on the Kiro harnesses: each lists every skill's name and description. Skill bodies still load through konductor-skills.

Notes for Reviewers

• Size: the 82 pointers add 17,354 characters of name + description to each agent's prompt (about 4.3k tokens at 4 characters per token), down from about 23.6k with full descriptions. A home install puts the pointers in ~/.kiro/skills/, where other Kiro agents see them too; --no-skill-pointers avoids that.
• Name: the pointer is listed as ks-<name>, not <name>. I kept the prefix because many of these names already exist in .kiro/skills/ from other tools, and a pointer with the same name would clash. The pointer text names the real skill, so "apply backend-review" resolves through it.
• Telemetry: not weakened. A get_skill load is counted as before. A load through the file fallback is not counted. I did not add hook-based counting: hooks fire on every call and would need filtering.
• Path in project installs: the fallback path is absolute, so a project install writes the local path into .kiro/skills/ks-*/SKILL.md. The docs say not to commit that directory.
• Existing gap, not changed here: in the probe, get_skill returned skills outside the agent's --skill-name-filter (k-developer got adr-generator). The server reads a top-level files array from .konductor/manifest (mcp/lib/skill-lookup-core/src/install_manifest.rs), but the manifest nests files under strategies[]. Every skill then counts as not installed by Konductor, and the filter keeps all of them. So the "stop on not-found" line only matters once that is fixed. It needs its own issue.
• Not verified: whether fs_read expands ~ (hence the absolute path), and the file fallback with the server disconnected.

[knihit]

Closing in favor of #119 and #120 (stacked). We kept the skills MCP server so skill loads stay counted, and fixed discovery there instead of adding native pointer skills:

• fix(mcp): make --skill-name-filter read the v2 install manifest #119 fixes --skill-name-filter, which read only the v1 manifest shape and so filtered nothing. Each agent now gets only its declared skills.
• feat(synth): add each Kiro agent's skills and a use rule to its prompt #120 adds a short list of each Kiro agent's own skills and a rule to use a matching one to its prompt. Loads still go through get_skill.

On the same tasks, scored from logs, the right skill loaded in 9 of 12 Kiro v3 runs with #120 against 3 of 12 on main. That matches this PR plus a use rule (9 of 12), at about a quarter of the prompt cost, and without writing into ~/.kiro/skills where other Kiro agents see it. This PR alone reached 6 of 12. Thanks for the pointer probe and for finding the filter bug.