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20. Target repository skills in triage ​

Hypothesis ​

When fullsend run triage executes Claude inside the target repository directory, Claude discovers and uses .claude/skills/ from that repository — even though CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR is set to /tmp/claude-config (the sandbox config directory for fullsend's own agent and skill definitions).

Background ​

Fullsend provisions agents inside OpenShell sandboxes. The bootstrap sequence sets CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=/tmp/claude-config where it copies the agent definition and harness-declared skills. Claude is then invoked with cd <target-repo-dir>.

Claude Code discovers project-level skills from .claude/skills/ in the current working directory's git root. This experiment tests whether that CWD-based discovery still works when CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR is overridden.

Method ​

  • Independent variable: Presence of .claude/skills/triage-guidance/SKILL.md in the target repository.
  • Control: Triage run against a synthetic Go REST API repo without .claude/skills/.
  • Treatment: Same run, same issue, but with a triage guidance skill committed to the repo.

All other inputs are held constant: same codebase, same GitHub issue, same fullsend scaffold (agent, harness, policy, scripts), same model.

Versions ​

ComponentVersion
fullsendde54df2 (built from source)
OpenShell0.0.36
Sandbox imageghcr.io/fullsend-ai/fullsend-sandbox:latest
Harnessinternal/scaffold/fullsend-repo/harness/triage.yaml

Evidence ​

  1. JSONL transcript (primary) — shows whether the skill appears in Claude's system prompt.
  2. Triage JSON output (secondary) — shows whether the agent's labeling behavior changed.

Results ​

Control ​

Treatment ​

  • Severity: critical
  • Labels: area:api, area:data, priority:critical, type:bug
  • Overall clarity score: 0.90
  • Reasoning explicitly cites: "Per triage guidance"
  • Full output: results/treatment/agent-result.json

Skill Discovery ​

Yes. The treatment transcript shows 3 mentions of triage-guidance:

  1. The agent called Skill("triage-guidance") during triage.
  2. The skill content was loaded from /tmp/workspace/repo/.claude/skills/triage-guidance.
  3. The skill instructions appeared in the agent's context.

The control transcript contains 0 mentions of triage-guidance.

bash
$ grep -c 'triage-guidance' results/treatment/transcript.jsonl
3
$ grep -c 'triage-guidance' results/control/transcript.jsonl
0

Conclusion ​

Hypothesis confirmed. Target repository .claude/skills/ are discovered and used by the fullsend triage agent inside OpenShell sandboxes, even though CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR is overridden to /tmp/claude-config.

Claude Code's CWD-based project skill discovery (cd <target-repo> && claude) operates independently of CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR. The agent discovers skills from the git root of its working directory regardless of where user-level config points.

Behavioral impact: The triage guidance skill changed the agent's output in two measurable ways:

  1. Severity escalation: "high" → "critical" (matching the skill's rule that panic/500 errors are priority:critical)
  2. Structured labeling: The treatment output includes explicit label references (area:api, area:data, priority:critical, type:bug) that match the skill's taxonomy exactly

The triage agent comments (control and treatment) can be seen on the target repo issue: https://github.com/maruiz93/experiment-target-repo-skills/issues/1

Note: The treatment agent referenced the skill's taxonomy labels (area:api, priority:critical, etc.) in its comment text, but these were not assigned to the GitHub issue. The post-triage.sh script only applies workflow labels (ready-to-code, needs-info, duplicate) — it does not parse or apply taxonomy labels from the agent's output. Extracting and assigning skill-defined labels is a potential improvement to the post-triage pipeline.

See Also ​