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Research: Unified Skills API & Gateway

Spec: spec.md
Date: 2026-04-29

All items below were resolved from the ratified spec, implementation-plan.md, and existing codebase patterns. No [NEEDS CLARIFICATION] remained at plan time.

1. URL namespace​

Decision: Consolidate under /api/skills/*; retire /api/agent-skills/* for CRUD, seed, generate, import-github.

Rationale: Single family for documentation, client code, and gateway scripts (FR-001, SC-001).

Alternatives considered: Keep legacy path as alias — rejected (permanent dual surface increases drift).

2. Catalog vs config​

Decision: GET /api/skills remains catalog-only merged view; persisted documents use /api/skills/configs (same semantics as current agent-skills CRUD).

Rationale: FR-002; avoids conflating browse and CRUD responses.

Alternatives considered: Single endpoint with ?mode= — rejected as error-prone for clients.

3. MongoDB storage​

Decision: Continue using collection name agent_skills; no rename in this feature.

Rationale: FR-003, spec assumptions.

Alternatives considered: New collection for imports — rejected (stakeholder lock).

Operations: See mongodb-migration.md — no mandatory migration script for this release; optional compound index if dedupe queries need it; future renameCollection documented as out-of-scope reference only.

4. Template import IDs​

Decision: id = skill-{slug}-{suffix} where suffix = first 6 hex chars of SHA-256(utf8(template_source_id + ':' + 'system')).

Rationale: FR-005, FR-006; stable across runs; dedupe key metadata.template_source_id + is_system: true.

Alternatives considered: UUID per insert — rejected (breaks idempotency).

5. List templates for import UI​

Decision: Reuse existing skill-templates listing used by the app today (e.g. GET /api/skill-templates or internal loader parity) rather than adding a redundant public route unless a gap is found during implementation.

Rationale: YAGNI; implementation-plan Phase B allows either path.

Alternatives considered: New GET /api/skills/templates — optional follow-up if the existing endpoint is insufficient.

6. Auto-seed​

Decision: At most one example in shared storage, driven by default template id (e.g. env SKILLS_AUTO_SEED_TEMPLATE_ID defaulting to incident-postmortem-report).

Rationale: FR-007; avoids silent full seedTemplatesFromDisk().

7. Gateway narrative​

Decision: Primary docs and TrySkillsGateway emphasize authenticated catalog GET and on-demand skill body fetch; bulk install.sh / copy-all positioned as advanced.

Rationale: FR-009.

Alternatives considered: Filesystem-first — rejected by spec.

8. Hash algorithm​

Decision: SHA-256 via Node crypto (same as implementation-plan).

Rationale: Spec assumptions; ubiquitous and sufficient for short suffix.