Registering a skill with BMad

Read this when the user asks whether a skill should be its own module, join one, or stay a plain skill; what registering gives; or how to add to the BMad Method. Smithy guesses the answer from what is installed and puts it in the read-back as its own line, so the user always sees and can change it.

The four choices

• Plain skill, outside the registry. No bmod.toml. It still works, and it can still read BMad config and customization. But bmad help never recommends it, setup never sees it, and update checks skip it. Right for a personal skill or a one-off the user keeps by hand.
• Single-skill module. Its own record in the same folder. Setup asks its questions, help recommends it, updates are checked, other skills can require it. Right for a lone skill that maintains a project file, has a path a team would set, or that the user wants bmad to know (help/shape-single-skill-module.md).
• Member of an existing module. A small bmod.toml naming the record, plus edits to the record: the skill list, a help row, a roster entry for an agent. The skill takes the module's prefix and lives beside its other members.
• First skill of a new module. A record folder plus the member file. Usually reached through package mode once two or more skills exist.

How Smithy guesses

No _bmad/ and nothing said about BMad: plain. _bmad/ present and a skill that reads config, maintains a project file, has a settable path, or that the user wants recommended: single-skill module. A skills repository with a record, a module the user named, or a name carrying an installed module's prefix: member. Several skills described: a new module. The guess is one line in the read-back with its consequence; the user confirms or changes it.

Adding to the BMad Method

Two different things. Contributing a skill to the official method module means a pull request to the BMAD-METHOD repository: the skill lives under its skills/, takes a bmad- name, and its bmod.toml names bmod-method. Extending the method inside a project means the user's own module with their own prefix, whose skills require or recommend the method skills they build on; it never takes a bmad- name and never edits the installed method record, which the next update would overwrite (help/how-to-add-to-module.md).

After the fact

A skill that was built plain can be registered later: convert mode's in-place path adds the record, and package mode wraps several. A skill wired to BMad with no record shows up in a review as "registered nowhere".