skilldecks-installer 0.2.5

Installer and license manager for the skilldecks-* family of Claude Code skills

skilldecks-installer

Installer and license manager for the skilldecks-* family of Claude Code skills.

What's in this pack → INDEX.md · Skills · Agents · Workflows · Scripts

What this does

skilldecks-installer is the bridge between a customer's purchased licenses and a working installation of skilldecks skills in their Claude Code environment. It:

1. Reads per-purchase license files from ~/.skilldecks/licenses/
2. Computes the merged entitlement (union by SKU)
3. Installs each owned SKU as a Python package via pip
4. Copies each SKU's SKILL.md + references into ~/.claude/skills/skilldecks/<sku>/ so Claude Code discovers them

It is also the home of the skilldecks CLI (install, update, add-license, status, setup, auth, init, doctor).

skilldecks update enforces the per-license updates_until field, and skilldecks status shows days-until-expiry per SKU. Lapsed-window SKUs skip the wheel fetch with a friendly renewal nudge; the installed version keeps working. See docs/plans/2026-05-10-perpetual-license-launch.md §6.1 to §6.3 for the full runtime contract, the 7-day signed-URL footgun, and the manual renewal flow.

Status

Alpha. Phase 1 of the marketplace launch plan (docs/plans/2026-05-09-marketplace-launch.md). R2 URL signing wired 2026-05-09 (see "Operator setup — R2 signing" below).

Operator setup — R2 signing

skd-admin license issue --method wheel signs R2 URLs at issuance time so the customer's skilldecks install can pip install the wheel directly. Only the operator needs R2 credentials — the signed URL embedded in the license YAML is self-authenticating until expiry.

One-time install

pip install 'skilldecks-installer[r2]'   # adds boto3

Required environment variables

Set these in your shell rc (~/.zshrc / ~/.bash_profile) so skd-admin can read them. They never end up in git, license YAMLs, or customer artifacts.

Var	Example	Where to find it
SKILLDECKS_R2_ACCOUNT_ID	2f6b6043df01b12524c5752df11ffb22	Cloudflare Dashboard → R2 → bucket details (or the hex prefix in the bucket URL)
SKILLDECKS_R2_BUCKET	skilldecks	The bucket name
SKILLDECKS_R2_ENDPOINT	https://2f6b6043df01b12524c5752df11ffb22.r2.cloudflarestorage.com	The S3 API endpoint URL without the bucket suffix
SKILLDECKS_R2_ACCESS_KEY	(redacted)	Cloudflare Dashboard → R2 → Manage API Tokens → create with "Object Read & Write" scoped to the bucket
SKILLDECKS_R2_SECRET_KEY	(redacted)	Same step as above. Cloudflare shows the secret once at creation — save to a password manager immediately.

How it behaves

Scenario	Result
All 5 env vars set, URL bucket matches SKILLDECKS_R2_BUCKET	URL signed with X-Amz-Signature=… query string, valid 7 days (AWS Sig v4 max)
Any env var missing/empty	Unsigned URL emitted + WARNING printed to stderr. License YAML is still issuable for dev/testing; install will fail at the actual download step.
URL bucket prefix doesn't match SKILLDECKS_R2_BUCKET	R2SigningError — operator misconfigured something. Update skus.yaml URL templates or the env var.

Customer perspective

Customers don't install [r2] and don't set any env vars. Their license YAML contains a pre-signed URL; skilldecks install runs pip install <url> and that's it.

URL expiry

Signed URLs are valid for 7 days (the AWS Sig v4 maximum for static credentials). If a customer takes longer than 7 days to install after receiving a license, run skd-admin license issue again for the same SKU and re-email the YAML.

Customer install (eventually)

curl -L https://skilldecks.<tld>/install | sh

This script will install skilldecks-installer (currently from a private wheel URL or git+ssh) and run skilldecks setup to drop the Claude Code skill into ~/.claude/skills/skilldecks/.

To opt into voice/sound feedback during install:

curl -L https://skilldecks.<tld>/install | SKILLDECKS_WITH_VOICE=1 sh

To skip the third-party bundles entirely (minimal install):

curl -L https://skilldecks.<tld>/install | SKILLDECKS_SKIP_BUNDLES=1 sh

License redemption

After a paid purchase, the operator (or, eventually, the skilldecks-store backend) issues a signed license YAML and uploads it to R2 under skilldecks/_redeem/<token>/license.yaml. The customer receives a presigned GET URL (AWS Sig v4, 7-day max TTL) by email and redeems it with one command:

skilldecks install --redeem 'https://<account>.r2.cloudflarestorage.com/skillsformarketing/_redeem/<token>/license.yaml?X-Amz-Signature=...'

This:

1. Downloads the YAML over HTTPS (30s timeout, identifies as User-Agent: skilldecks-installer/<version> so we're greppable in R2 access logs).
2. Verifies the embedded Ed25519 signature locally against the bundled public keys (dev + prod). The URL alone is NOT trusted — a compromised email or a typo'd URL must not be able to plant arbitrary YAML on the customer's machine.
3. Writes the file atomically to ~/.skilldecks/licenses/<license_id>.yaml.
4. Continues with the normal install (same code path as bare skilldecks install).

If anything fails (HTTP error, expired URL, bad signature, a license with the same license_id is already redeemed) the command exits with status 1 and does not run any pip install — redemption is all-or-nothing.

The 7-day TTL is the operator's policy; if a customer's URL has expired, the operator re-issues a fresh one (skd-admin license issue or, eventually, the store-backend re-signs). The redeem flow does NOT extend or refresh URLs on its own.

Security model in one paragraph

The presigned URL is just a delivery mechanism — the trust anchor is the Ed25519 signature inside the YAML, verified against public keys shipped in the wheel under skilldecks_installer/_keys/. As long as the operator's private key stays vaulted (~/.skilldecks/signing/ by convention), any tampering anywhere along the email/network path fails the signature check at redeem time, so the customer cannot end up with an unauthorized license.

What skilldecks setup installs

Component	Source	Lands at	Default
skilldecks CLI + installer skill	this package	~/.claude/skills/skilldecks-installer/ + pip user bin	always
~/.skilldecks/ scaffold	this package	~/.skilldecks/{licenses,credentials,vendor,templates}/	always
Best-practice agents/commands/rules/skills	shanraisshan/claude-code-best-practice	~/.claude/{agents,commands,rules,skills}/best-practice/	on, --skip-bundles to opt out
Best-practice CLAUDE.md template	same	~/.skilldecks/templates/best-practice-CLAUDE.md (staged, never auto-applied)	on
Voice/sound hooks	shanraisshan/claude-code-hooks	~/.claude/hooks/skilldecks-voice/	off, --with-voice to enable

Bundles are namespaced under best-practice/ and skilldecks-voice/ subdirs so we never collide with files the user has already authored.

Voice feedback (opt-in)

skilldecks voice enable    # fetch + install hooks, merge bindings into ~/.claude/settings.json
skilldecks voice status    # show enabled/disabled + binding count
skilldecks voice disable   # remove bindings (keeps files cached, fast re-enable)

Bindings are tagged skilldecks-voice:<HookEvent> so disable removes only our entries — your other hooks stay intact.

Activation (online seat enforcement)

A license can grant N concurrent machine activations. The mechanism:

1. The license YAML carries a seats: N field (default 1; bundles like agency_multi_client ship seats: 5).
2. On skilldecks install, the CLI POSTs {license_id, fingerprint} to ${SKILLDECKS_ACTIVATION_URL}/activate. The server records the activation if the cap allows, refuses with HTTP 409 if full.
3. Successful activations are cached at ~/.skilldecks/activation_<license_id>.json for 30 days by default, so subsequent installs on the SAME machine don't re-call. The cache stores ONLY the activation token + seat metadata — never license content. Operators who want a tighter window (e.g. faster seat-revocation propagation) set SKILLDECKS_ACTIVATION_CACHE_DAYS=<N> where N is an integer in [1, 90]. Out-of-range values raise a clear error at ActivationClient() construction time — a typo in a deployment env file fails loud at startup instead of silently leaking seats.
4. The machine fingerprint is the install_id already used for telemetry (~/.skilldecks/telemetry/.install-id). No new per-machine identifier is introduced; if you opted out of telemetry, the activation flow still uses this anonymous random id but doesn't send any telemetry events.

Backwards-compat

If SKILLDECKS_ACTIVATION_URL is unset, activation is skipped and skilldecks install prints a stderr note: "activation skipped (SKILLDECKS_ACTIVATION_URL not set)". Customer flows keep working until the operator deploys the activation server. Once deployed, the env var flips enforcement on with no client-side code change.

Customer commands

# Start using the license on this machine — happens automatically
# inside `skilldecks install`, no manual activation step required.
skilldecks install

# Free up a seat (e.g. retiring an old laptop):
skilldecks deactivate MKT-AGCY-MULT-CLNT
# Or release a different machine's seat (you'll need its fingerprint;
# the cap-exceeded message lists the active ones):
skilldecks deactivate MKT-AGCY-MULT-CLNT --fingerprint <fp>

# Inspect current usage:
skilldecks seats MKT-AGCY-MULT-CLNT

Cap-exceeded message

When the seat cap is full and you try to activate a new machine, skilldecks install exits with:

Seat limit reached for MKT-AGCY-MULT-CLNT: 5/5 in use.
Deactivate one of: <fp_a, fp_b, fp_c, fp_d, fp_e> via
`skilldecks deactivate MKT-AGCY-MULT-CLNT --fingerprint <fp>`, or
contact sales for a higher-seat license.

Cache, rotation, and growth

The customer-side cache is a single small JSON file per license. The server-side log is one <DATA_DIR>/activations/<license_id>.jsonl per license that grows by one line per (re)activation or deactivation. At v1 scale (a handful of machines per license over a multi-year window) growth is negligible. Operators who want hard caps on file size can run skilldecks_store.activation._compact_inplace on a daily cron — it rewrites each file with only the live records.

Vendored bundles

Third-party content is fetched into ~/.skilldecks/vendor/<bundle-name>/ at frozen SHAs (see skilldecks_installer/bundle_fetcher.py for current pins). We don't ship the 100MB+ payload in the wheel — it's pulled at skilldecks setup time. Bumping a pin in code requires customers to re-run skilldecks setup to pick up the change.

Local development

cd skilldecks-installer
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Layout

skilldecks-installer/
├── pyproject.toml
├── skilldecks_installer/        # the Python package
│   ├── cli.py                # `skilldecks` CLI
│   ├── admin.py              # `skd-admin` operator CLI
│   ├── schema.py             # Pydantic models for license YAML
│   ├── license_loader.py     # reads + merges ~/.skilldecks/licenses/
│   ├── pip_runner.py         # subprocess wrapper for pip
│   ├── skill_copier.py       # copies SKILL.md from installed packages
│   ├── bundle_fetcher.py     # clones third-party bundles to ~/.skilldecks/vendor/
│   └── bundle_installer.py   # deploys bundles into ~/.claude/ (namespaced)
├── skill/
│   └── SKILL.md              # the Claude Code skill that delegates to `skilldecks`
├── scripts/
│   ├── install.sh            # the curl|sh one-liner
│   └── skus.yaml             # SKU registry (operator-side)
└── tests/
    ├── conftest.py
    ├── fixtures/licenses/    # sample license YAMLs for tests
    └── test_*.py