Skilllibrary skill-lifecycle-management

Manage skills through lifecycle states — draft, beta, stable, deprecated, archived — applying promotion criteria, deprecation rules, and transition tracking. Use this when auditing skill maturity across a library, promoting a tested skill to stable, retiring a superseded skill, or tracking which skills are production-ready. Do not use for authoring new skills (use skill-authoring), improving individual skill quality (use skill-refinement), or curating the library catalog as a whole (use skill-catalog-curation).

install

source · Clone the upstream repo

git clone https://github.com/merceralex397-collab/skilllibrary

Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/

T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/merceralex397-collab/skilllibrary "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/03-meta-skill-engineering/skill-lifecycle-management" ~/.claude/skills/merceralex397-collab-skilllibrary-skill-lifecycle-management && rm -rf "$T"

manifest: 03-meta-skill-engineering/skill-lifecycle-management/SKILL.md

source content

Purpose

Manages skills through their full lifecycle: draft → beta → stable → deprecated → archived. Ensures library stays coherent, retired skills don't break workflows, and maturity states reflect reality.

When to use this skill

Use when:

User says "manage lifecycle", "what state is this?", "how do we retire properly?"
Library audit produced lifecycle actions needing execution
Skill being promoted, revised, or retired
Long-running project needs to track active/deprecated/archived

Do NOT use when:

Deprecating one specific skill (use
```
skill-deprecation-manager
```
)
Authoring new skill (use
```
skill-authoring
```
)
Library <15 skills—lightweight tracking sufficient

Operating procedure

Define lifecycle states:
- ```
draft
```
  : Being written, not validated—don't use in production
- ```
beta
```
  : Validated for basics, accepting feedback—use with monitoring
- ```
stable
```
  : Validated, promoted, default choice
- ```
deprecated
```
  : Replaced/not recommended—functional but don't use for new work
- ```
archived
```
  : Removed from active, reference only—don't install
Audit current states:
- List skills with maturity field
- Flag: draft >2 cycles, stable with bugs
Apply promotion criteria:
- draft → beta: Tested with 3+ real prompts, passed
- beta → stable: Evaluated with "Promote" verdict
Apply deprecation criteria:
- Better replacement exists
- Unused 3+ cycles
- Consistently fails evaluation
Execute transitions:
- Update
```
metadata.maturity
```
- Add event to PROVENANCE.md
Notify dependents:
- If deprecated referenced in AGENTS.md, commands, skills—flag for update
Update library index

Output defaults

## Lifecycle Audit

### State Summary
| State | Count | Skills |
|-------|-------|--------|
| draft | 5 | skill-a, skill-b, ... |
| stable | 20 | ... |

### Recommended Transitions
| Skill | Current | Recommended | Reason |
|-------|---------|-------------|--------|
| skill-x | draft | beta | 5 tests passed |
| skill-y | stable | deprecated | Superseded |

### Dependency Impact
| Deprecated | Referenced By | Action |
|------------|---------------|--------|
| skill-y | AGENTS.md L45 | Update reference |

### Actions
1. Promote skill-x to beta
2. Deprecate skill-y, update AGENTS.md

References

https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/agents/about-agent-skills — Agent skill structure including maturity fields
https://developers.openai.com/codex/skills — Codex skill metadata format
Library index/catalog for current state inventory
Individual skill frontmatter metadata.maturity fields

Failure handling

Maturity not tracked: Add
```
maturity
```
field to all skills based on evidence before proceeding
Circular dependencies on deprecated skill: Create replacement first
Disputed maturity: Default to more conservative state