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RexCLI Skills Install Experience Update: Global/Project Scope and a Clearer Picker

This iteration focused on two practical problems:

  1. Not every skill should appear by default in every project, especially skills that carry strong business or repo-specific semantics.
  2. Keeping “skill source files” and “installed skill targets” in the same directory tree makes cross-machine and cross-project syncing increasingly hard to maintain.

To address these, RexCLI tightened the skills lifecycle (install/uninstall/sync) and clarified the boundaries between:

  • system core capabilities,
  • optional extensions,
  • canonical source tree,
  • generated compatibility outputs.

Canonical Source Tree Moves to skill-sources/

The canonical skill authoring source is no longer .codex/skills or .claude/skills.

The new contract is:

  • skill-sources/ is the canonical source tree
  • .codex/skills, .claude/skills, .agents/skills, .gemini/skills, .opencode/skills are generated compatibility trees
  • repo-local compatibility trees are written/updated by node scripts/sync-skills.mjs

This means: when copying skills across machines/projects, treat skill-sources/ as the source of truth, not one specific client directory.

In addition, node scripts/check-skills-sync.mjs is now part of release preflight so generated outputs cannot drift silently from the canonical source tree.

Global vs Project Scope Installs

Skills install now supports explicit scope selection:

  • global: installs into a user-wide directory (e.g. ~/.codex/skills)
  • project: installs into the current repository directory (current pwd)

This lets you keep general-purpose methodology skills global while keeping strongly business/repo-coupled skills scoped to a single project.

Catalog-Driven Installs (Not “Scan and Install Everything”)

Installs are now driven by a curated catalog rather than “whatever is found under a directory”.

The practical outcome:

  • less accidental tool pollution,
  • clearer “what is installed and why” visibility in the TUI,
  • safer defaults when onboarding new projects.