`coldbox ai skills remove` reinstalls removed skill during agent configuration regeneration

[edyionescu]

What are the steps to reproduce this issue?

1. Verify that the wirebox-aop skill is installed: coldbox ai skills list | grep wirebox-aop
2. Remove the skill: coldbox ai skills remove wirebox-aop
3. Verify skill presence again: coldbox ai skills list | grep wirebox-aop

What happens?

The skill appears to be removed successfully, as the command outputs ✓ Skill 'wirebox-aop' removed successfully!. But during the same operation, a step labeled 📦 Installing 101 missing skill(s)... runs, which reinstalls the skill. Running coldbox ai skills list | grep wirebox-aop afterwards shows the skill is still present.

What were you expecting to happen?

The skill should be permanently removed and not reinstalled. After running coldbox ai skills remove wirebox-aop, the skill should no longer appear in coldbox ai skills list.

Any logs, error output, etc?

> coldbox ai skills remove wirebox-aop

 INFO   Removing skill: wirebox-aop

Are you sure you want to remove 'wirebox-aop'? [y/n] : y

 INFO   Regenerating agent configuration files...

  📦  Installing 101 missing skill(s)...
  ⬇️  Installing: wirebox-aop

 SUCCESS   ✓ Skill 'wirebox-aop' removed successfully!

  TIP   Use 'coldbox ai skills list' to see remaining skills

After removal, the skill is still listed:

> coldbox ai skills list | grep wirebox-aop
║ wirebox-aop                     │ 666d086 ║

What versions are you using?

Operating System: Windows 11 Pro 25H2
Package Version: 8.11.0+29

[lmajano]

This is a little problematic. Because the cli detects its coldbox and wants to add all the skills for coldbox.
That’s why the ai refresh reinstalls them.

So the question would be what skills need to be automatic if using coldbox and which ones are optional

[edyionescu]

In my opinion, all skills should be optional. What I would do is add an excludedSkills array to manifest.json, something like below:

{
  "skills": [...],
  "excludedSkills": ["wirebox-aop"],
  ...
}

When a user removes a skill, its name is added to this list. So, removeSkillFromProject() adds the removed skill's name to manifest.excludedSkills[] before saving. The two relevant loops inside refresh(), the one that installs missing skills and the one that reinstalls skills whose files are absent from disk, would both skip any skill whose name is in excludedSkills. Lastly, when the user opts back in, coldbox ai skills install wirebox-aop removes the skill from excludedSkills.

[lmajano]

I think that would work.

Well the idea was that the cli would detect your code and add the skills automatically for you. Then you can fine tune.

@homestar9 amy thoughts?

[homestar9]

Your idea in #68 is a perfect solution!