Skill sprawl / trigger drift findings (problem report)

## Skill Sprawl / Trigger Drift Findings (Problem Report)

This issue is focused on **what went wrong** and the evidence, not remediation steps.

## What was observed

In local Claude skill roots, there was substantial duplication/drift involving gstack skill trees:

- Duplicate skill directories existed both at:
- `~/.claude/skills/`
- `~/.claude/skills/gstack/`
- Repeated platform-style mirrors under:
- `gstack/.agents/skills`
- `gstack/.cursor/skills`
- `gstack/.factory/skills`
- `gstack/.gbrain/skills`
- `gstack/.hermes/skills`
- `gstack/.kiro/skills`
- `gstack/.openclaw/skills`
- `gstack/.opencode/skills`
- `gstack/.slate/skills`

## Repeat-count evidence (pre-cleanup snapshot)

Source snapshot (user scope): `artifacts/skill-audit/20260420-161638/skills_inventory.csv`

Most egregious repeat groups included:
- `open-gstack-browser`: **56**
- `autoplan`: **54**
- `benchmark`: **54**
- `browse`: **54**
- `canary`: **54**
- `careful`: **54**
- `cso`: **54**
- `design-consultation`: **54**
- `design-html`: **54**
- `design-review`: **54**
- `design-shotgun`: **54**
- `document-release`: **54**
- `freeze`: **54**
- `guard`: **54**
- `investigate`: **54**
- `land-and-deploy`: **54**
- `learn`: **54**
- `office-hours`: **54**
- `plan-ceo-review`: **54**
- `plan-design-review`: **54**

Filesystem modified-time ranges for these high-repeat groups clustered around roughly **2026-03-31 to 2026-04-20**.

## Behavioral symptom: unintended/ambiguous firing

- Primary intentional usage was essentially **`/codex`**.
- Other skills were generally not intentionally invoked.
- Some non-`/codex` skills appeared to fire intermittently (example: `plan-eng-review` in some sessions).

## Structural symptom: symlink coupling risk

A subset of top-level skills were symlink shims to gstack paths.

Example:
- `~/.claude/skills/codex/SKILL.md` -> `~/.claude/skills/gstack/codex/SKILL.md`

This indicates canonical-path coupling and increases risk of skill breakage if path ownership is ambiguous.

## Possible contributing factor (hypothesis)

Over several weeks, this environment frequently ran multiple agent clients in the same day, sometimes concurrently:

- Claude Code (multiple terminal instances)
- Gemini CLI (terminal)
- Codex desktop app (macOS)

This mixed/concurrent usage pattern may have contributed to skill-tree drift and trigger instability.

---

This report is intended to capture the problem signature and evidence so maintainers can decide design/ownership fixes upstream.