Skill Sentinel is a developer utility designed to diagnose, optimize, and auto-remediate activation failures in AI agent skills.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install skill-trigger-doctor
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install skill-trigger-doctor using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is Skill Sentinel?
Skill Sentinel addresses the widespread issue where 65% of AI agent skills fail to trigger due to preventable description errors. Built specifically to enhance Openclaw Skills, Claude Code, and compatible agent frameworks, this utility helps developers systematically analyze, validate, and resolve activation failures.
By translating passive, descriptive language into directive, authoritative design patterns, Skill Sentinel helps developers achieve near-100% activation rates. It protects agent environments from silent skill-dropping issues caused by token budget overflows, ensuring that all custom tools are accessible, parsed correctly, and executed exactly when needed.
Skill Sentinel Use Cases
- Troubleshooting "skill not working" issues when an AI agent fails to trigger a specific tool.
- Auditing Openclaw Skills description quality to ensure it matches verified activation design patterns.
- Detecting and correcting malformed YAML frontmatter configurations that break agent parsers.
- Eliminating trigger conflicts and resource overlaps when multiple skills compete for similar user intents.
- Managing total token footprint by ensuring aggregated character counts do not exceed agent limitations.
How Skill Sentinel Works
- Run Automated Scan: Use the CLI diagnostic tool to scan your skills directory for formatting errors, unquoted colons, and path discovery issues.
- Evaluate Description Quality: Score registered descriptions based on the presence of directive keywords, length limitations, and trigger vocabularies.
- Analyze Conflict Overlap: Map registered keyword targets across all Openclaw Skills to isolate overlaps and suggest explicit negative constraints.
- Verify Token Budgets: Ensure total context usage from frontmatter descriptions stays safely under defined character thresholds.
- Apply Automated Fixes: Execute self-healing rules to wrap broken strings, trim wordy parameters, and append trigger templates.
Skill Sentinel Setup
Installation and Discovery
Ensure your skills are placed in a supported target path (such as ~/.openclaw/skills/ or within your active workspace directory).
Running the Audit CLI
Scan your workspace to discover current activation scores and locate breaking syntax problems:
python3 scripts/audit_skills.py --skills-dir ~/.openclaw/skills/
Running with Auto-Remediation
Enable automatic fixes for syntax errors, unquoted colons, and excessive lengths using the --fix flag:
python3 scripts/audit_skills.py --skills-dir ~/.openclaw/skills/ --fix
Path Verification
Verify that active agent runners can discover your custom tools by executing:
python3 scripts/audit_skills.py --paths
Skill Sentinel Data Schema & Taxonomy
Directory Layout and Assets
Skill Sentinel operates on structured metadata paths and logs failures to improve routing precision:
| File / Directory Path | Type | Role |
|---|---|---|
~/.openclaw/skills/ |
Directory | The standard repository where custom Openclaw Skills are saved and audited. |
scripts/audit_skills.py |
Python Script | Automated utility for frontmatter validation, token budget math, and formatting fixes. |
scripts/analyze_failures.py |
Python Script | Calibration script that reads agent interaction history to discover missing trigger patterns. |
references/failure-patterns.md |
Reference Doc | A compiled log of activation errors, design pattern analyses, and resolution steps. |
Frontmatter Schema Rules
To prevent YAML parser crashes and prompt context dropouts, ensure your headers comply with the following taxonomy:
name: Unique identification string for agent routing.description: High-impact text limited to under 150 characters. Must use directive tone and be completely enclosed in quotes.
Skill Sentinel Advanced Features
- Directive Grammar Calibration: Rewrites descriptions from a passive style into directive formulas to double agent engagement rates.
- Automated YAML Syntax Repair: Catches and escapes common parsing bugs, such as raw colons inside description fields.
- Token Budget Guardrails: Monitors the aggregate size of all active Openclaw Skills to ensure they do not silently exceed character limits.
- Negative Constraints Generator: Automatically recommends exclusionary directives to separate overlapping skill scopes.
- Auto-Calibration Logs Loop: Analyzes historical failure rates to iteratively patch and strengthen trigger phrase matching.
SKILL.md
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