skillnav

Official CLI client for the Skill management platform (SkillNavigator).

Specification: docs/cli-design.md in the platform repository.

Install

pip install skillnav -i https://mirrors.aliyun.com/pypi/simple/
# or from this repo:
pip install -e "cli-py[dev]"

Usage

skillnav --version
skillnav config connect-test          # tests the active profile
skillnav trash list                   # what is in your recycle bin
skillnav bookmark list                # skills you saved for later
# Create an API key in the Web UI (Account → API Keys), then:
skillnav login --api-key sk_...
skillnav search demo                  # anonymous
skillnav info demo-skill
skillnav install demo-skill --dir ~/skills/demo-skill   # --dir is required
skillnav publish examples/demo-skill --dry-run
skillnav download demo-skill -o /tmp/demo.zip
skillnav update              # upgrade to the latest release
skillnav update --check      # check only, do not install

Global flags: --registry, --profile, --json, --no-input.

search / top / info (and status / report) work without a key; install, download, publish, rate, issue, unpublish and republish need one.

install requires an explicit --dir — point it at the directory your agent actually loads skills from. There is no implicit default, because agent clients often run in temporary or sandboxed working directories.

Configuration: ~/.config/skillnav/config.json (multi-profile; stores apiKey per profile). Adding a profile whose name already exists is refused — reuse it with skillnav config use <name> instead.

Environment: SKILLNAV_REGISTRY, SKILLNAV_PROFILE, SKILLNAV_API_KEY (legacy alias: SKILLNAV_TOKEN).

Long-running publishes

publish returns as soon as the package is stored — inspection runs in the background unless you ask otherwise. publish --wait (and retry-inspection --wait) keep the request open until the whole pipeline is done; that pipeline waits on SkillSpector, VirusTotal and HaluCatch, and VirusTotal queues newly uploaded files for minutes. Those calls therefore use a 600s request budget instead of the default 120s:

skillnav publish ./my-skill --wait
SKILLNAV_PUBLISH_WAIT_TIMEOUT=900 skillnav publish ./my-skill --wait

A timed-out request is reported as a timeout, never as "cannot reach the API", and the hint points at skillnav status <slug> and skillnav retry-inspection <slug> — the server keeps working after the client gives up, so re-uploading the same version is never the right fix.

VirusTotal defers by default: the upload ends that stage, the report is collected by a background sweep (every 5 minutes, 45-minute fallback) and the verdict is decided again once it lands. A version waiting for it shows inspectionStatus: inspecting and stage virustotal: processing — that is normal waiting, not a failure: do not retry-inspection (it returns 409 skill_inspection_in_progress) and do not re-upload the version. The skill is owner-only until the report lands.

Skill lifecycle (unpublish / delete / republish)

Taking a skill out of public search is not a deletion — the package, its inspection data and its version history all stay:

skillnav unpublish my-skill                   # remove from public search (y/N prompt)
skillnav --no-input unpublish my-skill        # agents / CI: skip the prompt
skillnav unpublish my-skill --version 1.0.0   # one version (never the latest)
skillnav unpublish my-skill --delete          # move to the recycle bin (3 days, then purged)
skillnav republish my-skill                   # put it back (visibility only)

--delete is the Web "delete" button: the skill is hidden and publishing under that slug is blocked until it is restored from the recycle bin (or the 3-day window expires). republish is the counterpart of unpublish and cannot bypass review — the server refuses while an inspection is running, interrupted or rejected, pointing at retry-inspection or at shipping a new version.

An unpublished skill reports Published: no (private) in skillnav status.

Upgrade and version check

Release lookups try PyPI first (pypi.org/pypi/skillnav/json) and fall back to the Aliyun simple index when PyPI times out or fails. Explicit skillnav update / update --check wait up to 10s per source; if both fail, the error lists each source's failure.

On top of that, an interactive command performs a daily best-effort check and prints a one-line hint to stderr when a newer release exists:

Update available: 0.4.12 -> 0.4.13 (run: skillnav update)

• The hint is interactive-only and plain ASCII (same wording as update --check): it is skipped for --json and whenever stderr is not a TTY — pipes, CI jobs and agent harnesses stay silent, so machine-read output is never polluted.

• The result is cached in ~/.config/skillnav/update-check.json; the network is touched at most once per 24h (a failed lookup also backs off for 24h, so offline/air-gapped hosts wait at most once a day).

• A given release is announced at most once, ever. The hint is driven by a new release appearing, not by time: staying on an older version goes permanently silent for that version, and only a newer latest (0.4.13 → 0.5.0) announces again. So you are never nagged about the same version day after day.

• A missed hint is never fatal: skillnav --version prints the same hint to stderr (its stdout stays a single parseable version line), and skillnav update / update --check always perform a real lookup and show the result.

• The daily lookup uses a short timeout (default 3s, SKILLNAV_UPDATE_CHECK_TIMEOUT seconds to change).

• The hint goes to stderr only — --json output on stdout stays clean.

• Disable entirely with SKILLNAV_UPDATE_CHECK=off; editable installs (development checkouts) skip the check automatically.

• The check only notifies; upgrades stay explicit (skillnav update), which handles pip / pipx installs and refuses editable installs.

• The package version has a single source of truth: skillnav/__init__.py __version__ (read by pyproject.toml via a dynamic attr), so the wheel and the CLI can never disagree.

Test

Requires a running API at http://127.0.0.1:3000 (npm run dev:api):

pip install -e "cli-py[dev]"
npm run skillnav:test

Unit tests only (no API):

pytest tests/skillnav -v --ignore=tests/skillnav/test_integration.py

License

Apache-2.0