Salvage-follow-up to @shannonsands's /reload-skills PR. Trims the feature to
match the design: user-initiated rescan, no prompt-cache reset, no new
schema surface, no phantom user turn, and the next-turn note carries each
added/removed skill's 60-char description (not just its name).
Changes vs the original PR:
* Drop the in-process skills prompt-cache clear in reload_skills(). Skills
are invoked at runtime via /skill-name, skills_list, or skill_view —
they don't need to live in the system prompt for the model to use them.
Keeping the cache intact preserves prefix caching across the reload so
/reload-skills pays no cache-reset cost. (MCP has to break the cache
because tool schemas must be known at conversation start; skills do not.)
* Drop the skills_reload agent tool and SKILLS_RELOAD_SCHEMA from
tools/skills_tool.py, plus the four skills_reload enumerations in
toolsets.py. No new schema surface — agents can already see a freshly-
installed skill via skill_view / skills_list the moment it's on disk.
* Replace the phantom 'role: user' turn injection with a one-shot queued
note. CLI uses self._pending_skills_reload_note (same pattern as
_pending_model_switch_note, prepended to the next API call and cleared).
Gateway uses self._pending_skills_reload_notes[session_key]. The note
is prepended to the NEXT real user message in this session, so message
alternation stays intact and nothing out-of-band is persisted to the
transcript.
* reload_skills() now returns added/removed as
[{'name': str, 'description': str}, ...] (description truncated to 60
chars — matches the curator / gateway adapter budget). The injected
next-turn note formats each entry as 'name — description' so the model
can actually reason about which new skills to call without running
skills_list first.
* Only emit the note when the diff is non-empty. On empty diff, print
'No new skills detected' and do nothing else.
* Tests rewritten to cover the queue semantics, the description payload,
and a regression guard that the prompt-cache snapshot is preserved.
Adds a public reload path for the in-process skill caches so newly
installed (or removed) skills become visible mid-session without a
gateway restart. Mirrors the shape of /reload-mcp.
Three surfaces:
* /reload-skills slash command — CLI (cli.py) and gateway (gateway/run.py),
with /reload_skills alias for Telegram autocomplete and an explicit
Discord registration.
* skills_reload agent tool (tools/skills_tool.py) — lets agents/subagents
pick up freshly-installed skills via tool call.
* agent.skill_commands.reload_skills() — shared helper that clears
_skill_commands, _SKILLS_PROMPT_CACHE (in-process LRU), and the
on-disk .skills_prompt_snapshot.json, then returns an added/removed
diff plus the new total count.
Tested:
* tests/agent/test_skill_commands_reload.py (9 cases)
* tests/cli/test_cli_reload_skills.py (3 cases)
* tests/gateway/test_reload_skills_command.py (4 cases)
Use case: NemoClaw / OpenShell-style sandboxed orchestrators that drop
skills into ~/.hermes/skills mid-session, plus agentic flows where the
agent itself installs a skill via the shell tool and needs it bound
without a gateway restart. The Python helper
clear_skills_system_prompt_cache(clear_snapshot=True) already exists
internally — this PR just exposes it via slash command and tool.
