Previously, pinning a skill blocked every skill_manage write action
(edit, patch, delete, write_file, remove_file). The 'hard fence'
design conflated two concerns:
1. Pin as deletion protection — don't let the curator archive
or the agent delete a stable skill.
2. Pin as content freeze — don't let the agent rewrite it mid-conversation.
In practice (1) is what users pin for: they want a skill to survive
curator passes. (2) created friction — agents finding a new pitfall
in a pinned skill had to ask the user to unpin, then the agent
patches, then the user re-pins. The dance discouraged skill
maintenance and pinned skills went stale.
This narrows the _pinned_guard to skill_manage(action='delete') only.
Patches, edits, and supporting-file writes go through on pinned
skills so the agent can keep improving them. The curator's own
pinned-skip behavior (agent/curator.py:271 for auto-archive,
line 349 for the LLM review prompt) is unchanged — curator still
never touches pinned skills.
Changes:
- tools/skill_manager_tool.py: remove _pinned_guard calls from
_edit_skill, _patch_skill, _write_file, _remove_file; keep on
_delete_skill. Updated _pinned_guard docstring and error message.
- tools/skill_manager_tool.py: updated skill_manage model-facing tool
description to reflect the new semantic.
- website/docs/user-guide/features/curator.md: updated pinning
section.
- tests/tools/test_skill_manager_tool.py: flipped refuses-pinned
tests for edit/patch/write_file/remove_file into allowed-when-pinned;
kept test_delete_refuses_pinned (strengthened assertion to check the
'cannot be deleted' wording).
Closes#18354
b10e38e392