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Skills

Tapes can extract reusable patterns from derived session transcripts with an LLM, store them under ~/.tapes/skills/, and sync them into agent skill directories.

A generated transcript follows the main conversation spine: turn-level prompts and responses from traces/spans, excluding harness shadow calls such as permission checks, title generation, and injected context.

Generate

A name in kebab-case is required:

tapesctl skill generate <session-id> --name debug-react-hooks

Use multiple session IDs, or find matching sessions through span search:

tapesctl skill generate <session-a> <session-b> --name retry-patterns
tapesctl skill generate --search "gum glow charm" \
  --search-top 3 --name charm-cli-patterns

Other useful controls are:

tapesctl skill generate <session-id> --name morning-work \
  --since 2026-02-17 --until 2026-02-17T17:00:00Z \
  --type workflow --preview

Skill types are workflow, domain-knowledge, and prompt-template. Generation defaults to the OpenAI provider; select --provider openai|anthropic|ollama, plus --model or --api-key when required. It may connect to the API with --api-target or use --postgres for a local in-process API.

List

tapesctl skill list
tapesctl skill list --type workflow

Sync

Authoring a skill reads session data, so generate and list live in tapes. Installing one into an agent’s skills directory is a local file copy with no server involved, so it lives in the client, tapesctl.

By default, sync writes to the global, agent-neutral ~/.agents/skills/:

tapesctl skill sync debug-react-hooks

Choose project-local or Claude Code paths explicitly:

tapesctl skill sync debug-react-hooks --local             # .agents/skills/
tapesctl skill sync debug-react-hooks --claude            # ~/.claude/skills/
tapesctl skill sync debug-react-hooks --claude --local    # .claude/skills/
tapesctl skill sync debug-react-hooks --dry-run

Generated skills are files you can inspect and version like other agent instructions. Preview generation and use --dry-run before syncing when the source session contains project-specific assumptions.