openclaw-openclaw/docs/tools/skill-workshop.md

summary, read_when, title, sidebarTitle

summary	read_when	title	sidebarTitle
Create and update workspace skills through Skill Workshop review	You want the agent to create or update a skill from chat You need to review, apply, reject, or quarantine a generated skill draft You are configuring Skill Workshop approval, autonomy, storage, or limits	Skill Workshop	Skill Workshop

Skill Workshop is OpenClaw's governed path for creating and updating workspace skills. Agents and operators never write SKILL.md directly through this path — they create a proposal (pending draft with content, target binding, scanner state, hashes, and rollback metadata) that becomes a live skill only when applied.

Skill Workshop writes workspace skills only. It never touches bundled, plugin, ClawHub, extra-root, managed, personal-agent, or system skills.

How it works

• Proposal first: generated content is stored as PROPOSAL.md, not SKILL.md.
• Apply is the only live write: create, update, and revise never change active skills.
• Workspace scoped: creates target the workspace skills/ root; updates are allowed only for writable workspace skills.
• No clobber: create fails if the target skill already exists.
• Hash bound: update proposals bind to the current target hash and go stale if the live skill changes before apply.
• Scanner gated: apply reruns the security scanner before writing.
• Recoverable: apply writes rollback metadata before touching live files.
• Consistent surfaces: chat, CLI, and Gateway all call the same service.

Lifecycle

create/update -> pending
revise        -> pending
apply         -> applied
reject        -> rejected
quarantine    -> quarantined
target change -> stale

Only a pending proposal can be revised, applied, rejected, or quarantined.

Chat

Ask the agent for the skill you want; it calls skill_workshop and returns a proposal id.

Learn from recent work

Use /learn to turn the current conversation or named sources into one standards-guided skill proposal:

/learn
/learn docs/runbook.md and https://example.com/guide; focus on recovery

With no request, /learn asks the agent to distill the reusable workflow from the current conversation. With a request, the agent treats paths, URLs, pasted notes, and conversation references as sources while honoring focus, scope, and naming requirements. It gathers the sources with its existing tools, then calls skill_workshop with action: "create".

The resulting proposal stays pending; /learn never applies it. Review and apply it through the normal approval flow or with openclaw skills workshop.

Create:

Make a skill called morning-catchup that runs my Monday inbox routine.

Update an existing workspace skill:

Update trip-planning to also check seat maps before booking.

Iterate on a pending proposal:

Show me the morning-catchup proposal.
Revise it to also flag anything marked urgent.
Apply the morning-catchup proposal.

Agent-initiated apply, reject, and quarantine show an approval prompt by default. Set skills.workshop.approvalPolicy to "auto" to skip it in trusted environments.

The prompt identifies the proposal id and target skill, and shows the proposal description, support-file count, and body size. Approval requests are bounded to finish before the agent tool watchdog. If no decision arrives before the prompt expires, the lifecycle action does not run: the proposal stays pending and unchanged. Decide later in the Skill Workshop UI or run openclaw skills workshop apply|reject|quarantine <proposal-id>. Agents should not retry an expired lifecycle action in a loop.

CLI

# Create
openclaw skills workshop propose-create \
  --name morning-catchup \
  --description "Daily inbox catch-up: triage, archive, surface, draft, plan" \
  --proposal ./PROPOSAL.md

# Update an existing workspace skill
openclaw skills workshop propose-update trip-planning --proposal ./PROPOSAL.md

# List and inspect
openclaw skills workshop list
openclaw skills workshop inspect <proposal-id>

# Revise before approval
openclaw skills workshop revise <proposal-id> --proposal ./PROPOSAL.md

# Close out
openclaw skills workshop apply <proposal-id>
openclaw skills workshop reject <proposal-id> --reason "Duplicate"
openclaw skills workshop quarantine <proposal-id> --reason "Needs security review"

Every subcommand takes --agent <id> (target workspace; defaults to cwd-inferred, then the default agent) and --json (structured output). propose-create, propose-update, and revise also take --goal <text> and --evidence <text> to record proposal context alongside --proposal.

Proposal content

While pending, the proposal is stored as PROPOSAL.md with proposal-only frontmatter:

---
name: "morning-catchup"
description: "Daily inbox catch-up: triage, archive, surface, draft, plan"
status: proposal
version: "v1"
date: "2026-05-30T00:00:00.000Z"
---

On apply, Skill Workshop writes the active SKILL.md and removes the proposal-only fields: status, proposal version, and proposal date.

Support files

Use --proposal-dir when the proposed skill needs files beside PROPOSAL.md:

openclaw skills workshop propose-create \
  --name weekly-update \
  --description "Friday wrap-up: stats, highlights, next week's top three" \
  --proposal-dir ./weekly-update-proposal

The directory must contain PROPOSAL.md. Support files must live under assets/, examples/, references/, scripts/, or templates/. Skill Workshop scans, hashes, and stores them with the proposal, then writes them beside the live SKILL.md only on apply.

Rejected support-file paths: absolute paths, hidden path segments, path traversal, overlapping paths, executable files, non-UTF-8 text, null bytes, and paths outside the standard support folders.

Agent tool

The model uses skill_workshop with one required action: create | update | revise | list | inspect | apply | reject | quarantine. Other parameters apply depending on the action:

Parameter	Used by	Notes
name	create, inspect, revise	Required for create; resolves a pending proposal by name otherwise
description	create, update, revise	Max 160 bytes
skill_name	update	Existing skill name or key
proposal_content	create, update, revise	Stored as PROPOSAL.md; capped by skills.workshop.maxSkillBytes
support_files	create, update, revise	Array of { path, content }
goal, evidence	create, update, revise	Free-text context
proposal_id	inspect, revise, apply, reject, quarantine	Target proposal
reason	apply, reject, quarantine	Optional
query, status, limit	list	Filter/paginate; limit max 50, default 20

Agents must use skill_workshop for generated skill work. They must not create or change proposal files through write, edit, exec, shell commands, or direct filesystem operations.

`skill_workshop` is a built-in agent tool and is included in `tools.profile: "coding"`. If a stricter policy hides it, add `skill_workshop` to the active `tools.allow` list, or use `tools.alsoAllow: ["skill_workshop"]` when the scope uses a profile without an explicit `tools.allow`. Sandboxed runs do not construct the host-side Skill Workshop tool, so run proposal review actions from a normal host-side agent session or the CLI.

Suggested skills

OpenClaw detects durable instructions such as “next time,” “remember to,” and reactive corrections when an interactive turn ends, including failed turns. On the next turn, the agent offers to save the most recent detected workflow through skill_workshop; the user decides whether to create a proposal. This built-in suggestion does not create or change a skill by itself. Enable skills.workshop.autonomous.enabled to create pending proposals directly instead.

Approval and autonomy

{
  skills: {
    workshop: {
      autonomous: {
        enabled: false,
      },
      allowSymlinkTargetWrites: false,
      approvalPolicy: "pending",
      maxPending: 50,
      maxSkillBytes: 40000,
    },
  },
}

Setting	Default	Effect
autonomous.enabled	false	Creates pending proposals directly instead of offering the most recent detected workflow on the next turn.
allowSymlinkTargetWrites	false	Lets apply write through workspace skill symlinks whose real target is listed in skills.load.allowSymlinkTargets.
approvalPolicy	"pending"	"pending" requires an approval prompt before agent-initiated apply, reject, or quarantine. "auto" skips the prompt (the agent still has to call the action).
maxPending	50	Caps pending and quarantined proposals per workspace (1-200).
maxSkillBytes	40000	Caps proposal body size in bytes (1024-200000).

Autonomous capture recognizes prospective rules (for example, “from now on”) and reactive corrections (for example, “that’s not what I asked”). It groups new instructions by topic into up to three proposals per turn, routes vocabulary matches to existing writable workspace skills, and revises its own pending proposal when another correction targets the same skill.

Proposal descriptions are always capped at 160 bytes, independent of maxSkillBytes.

Gateway methods

Method	Scope
skills.proposals.list	operator.read
skills.proposals.inspect	operator.read
skills.proposals.create	operator.admin
skills.proposals.update	operator.admin
skills.proposals.revise	operator.admin
skills.proposals.requestRevision	operator.admin
skills.proposals.apply	operator.admin
skills.proposals.reject	operator.admin
skills.proposals.quarantine	operator.admin

requestRevision is Gateway-only (no CLI or agent-tool equivalent): it forwards free-text revision instructions to the owning agent's chat session instead of replacing PROPOSAL.md directly, for UIs that ask the agent to revise rather than submit literal new content.

Storage

<OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR>/skill-workshop/
  proposals.json
  proposals/<proposal-id>/
    proposal.json
    PROPOSAL.md
    rollback.json
    assets/
    examples/
    references/
    scripts/
    templates/

Default state directory: ~/.openclaw.

• proposal.json: canonical proposal record.
• proposals.json: fast listing index, rebuildable from proposal folders.
• PROPOSAL.md: pending skill proposal.
• rollback.json: recovery metadata written before apply changes live files.

Limits

Limit	Value
Description	160 bytes
Proposal body	skills.workshop.maxSkillBytes (default 40,000; hard ceiling 1 MiB)
Support files	64 per proposal
Support file size	256 KiB each, 2 MiB total
Pending + quarantined proposals	skills.workshop.maxPending per workspace (default 50)

Troubleshooting

Problem	Resolution
Skill proposal description is too large	Shorten description to 160 bytes or less.
Skill proposal content is too large	Shorten the proposal body or raise skills.workshop.maxSkillBytes.
Target skill changed after proposal creation	Revise the proposal against the current target, or create a new proposal.
Proposal scan failed	Inspect scanner findings, then revise or quarantine the proposal.
untrusted symlink target	Configure skills.load.allowSymlinkTargets and enable skills.workshop.allowSymlinkTargetWrites only for intentional shared skill roots.
Support file paths must be under one of...	Move support files under assets/, examples/, references/, scripts/, or templates/.
Proposal does not show in list	Check the selected --agent workspace and OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR.
Agent cannot call skill_workshop	Check the active tool policy and run mode. coding includes the tool; restrictive tools.allow policies must list it explicitly, and sandboxed runs must use a normal host-side agent session or the CLI.

Tool-policy diagnostic

When autonomous capture is enabled, openclaw doctor runs the core/doctor/skill-workshop-tool-policy check for the default agent. If policy hides skill_workshop, the warning names the first excluding config layer and the exact allow or alsoAllow change to make. Older runbooks may still use openclaw plugins inspect skill-workshop; that command now explains that Skill Workshop is built in and prints the same policy hint when applicable.

Related

• Skills for load order, precedence, and visibility
• Creating skills for hand-written SKILL.md basics
• Skills config for the full skills.workshop schema
• Skills CLI for openclaw skills commands