Managing Skills

Skills live on your filesystem. QARK discovers them by scanning registered folders for directories containing a SKILL.md file. The skill sidebar gives you full control over which folders are registered, which skills are active, and how their environments are managed.

Skill Folders

A skill folder is a directory you register with QARK that may contain one or more skills. Each subdirectory with a SKILL.md file is treated as an individual skill.

registered-folder/
├── web-scraper/
│   └── SKILL.md
├── pdf-processor/
│   ├── SKILL.md
│   └── scripts/
│       └── extract.py
└── code-review/
    ├── SKILL.md
    └── references/
        └── style-guide.md

Add a Folder

Open the skill sidebar and click the + button, or drag and drop a folder directly onto the sidebar. QARK registers the folder path and immediately scans it for skills.

Remove a Folder

Right-click the folder in the sidebar and select Remove Folder. This unregisters the folder — it does not delete any files from disk.

Toggle a Folder

Each folder has an enable/disable toggle. Disabling a folder hides all its skills from the catalog without unregistering it. Re-enable at any time to bring them back.

Skill Discovery

When you add a folder or click the Rescan button, QARK walks the directory tree looking for SKILL.md files:

• Max depth: 4 levels of subdirectories
• Max directories: 2,000 per scan
• Leaf detection: a directory containing SKILL.md is treated as a leaf — QARK does not descend into it
• Skipped directories: .git, node_modules, .venv, __pycache__, dist, build, target

Each discovered SKILL.md is parsed for its YAML frontmatter. The name and description fields are extracted for the Tier 1 catalog. Invalid or malformed files are skipped with a warning.

Enable and Disable Skills

Individual skills can be toggled independently of their parent folder:

• Enable — the skill appears in the catalog and agents can activate it
• Disable — the skill is hidden from the catalog. Agents cannot see or use it

Disabled skills are tracked in the database, so the setting persists across app restarts and rescans.

Skill Sidebar

The sidebar organizes skills hierarchically: folders at the top level, individual skills nested inside.

Search

Type in the search bar to filter skills by name or description. The search applies across all registered folders.

Skill Details

Click a skill or select View Details from the context menu to open a modal showing:

• Full YAML frontmatter (name, description, license, compatibility, metadata, allowed-tools)
• The complete Markdown instructions from the SKILL.md body
• Resource listing (scripts, references, assets)

Context Menu

Right-click any skill for quick actions:

• Enable / Disable — toggle the skill
• View Details — open the detail modal
• Open in Finder — reveal the skill directory on disk
• Reinstall Dependencies — reset the skill’s environment (see below)

Tool Badges

If a skill declares allowed-tools in its frontmatter, the sidebar shows badges for each required tool. A warning icon appears if a required tool is not available in the current configuration — for example, if a skill requires web_search but no search API key is configured.

Environment Management

Skills with scripts may require runtime dependencies. QARK auto-detects and installs them on first execution:

• Python skills — creates a .venv virtual environment inside the skill directory and installs dependencies
• Node.js skills — runs npm install to populate node_modules inside the skill directory

Reset an Environment

If a skill’s environment becomes corrupted or you want to force a fresh install, use Reinstall Dependencies from the context menu. This deletes the existing .venv or node_modules and recreates them on the next script execution.