Harvest skill's mandatory Step 7 depends on unpublished _HARVEST skill + private Arbol backend — unusable on public installs

[elhoim]

Summary

The public Harvest skill has a mandatory final step (Step 7) that invokes a skill which is not part of the public release. Any user who runs Harvest on a clean LifeOS install hits an unsatisfiable step, and — by the skill's own rules — the harvest can never report completion.

Where it breaks

Harvest/Workflows/Harvest.md, Step 7 — Ingest into the Knowledge Archive (ALWAYS the final step):

bun ~/.claude/skills/_HARVEST/Tools/harvest.ts "<original input>"

• LifeOS/install/skills/Harvest/Workflows/Harvest.md L84 — the invocation
• L87 — "Runs the canonical Arbol pipeline (_F_HARVEST classify → HarvestExecutor.ts write). Never write to MEMORY/KNOWLEDGE/ by hand."
• L89 — "A harvest is not complete until the note is written or the failure is surfaced."

And it is reinforced as non-optional in Harvest/SKILL.md:

• L10 — "always as the final step, ingest … via the _HARVEST pipeline"
• L28 — "Harvest calls it as its mandatory final step"
• L39 — "KB ingestion is not optional and not skippable on a thin harvest."
• L46 — the Examples block repeats the _HARVEST/Tools/harvest.ts call.

Why it can't run on a public install

1. skills/_HARVEST/ is not published. It is a private, underscore-prefixed skill, and the release tooling excludes every _-prefixed skill by design. Confirmed: skills/_HARVEST/Tools/harvest.ts returns 404 on main, and there are zero _-prefixed skills anywhere under LifeOS/install/skills/. So the Step 7 path does not exist for any public user.

2. The shipped fallback isn't a drop-in either. LIFEOS/TOOLS/HarvestExecutor.ts does ship, but it is only the downstream write half of the pipeline. It fetches already-classified items from a private Arbol endpoint and throws immediately without it:

   const HARVEST_API_BASE = process.env.ARBOL_HARVEST_API_BASE ?? "";
   // ...
   if (!HARVEST_API_BASE) { throw new Error(...) }

   LifeOS/install/LIFEOS/TOOLS/HarvestExecutor.ts L29, L153. The _HARVEST wrapper is what owns and threads that URL; without the wrapper and a running Arbol harvest service, there is no ingestion path.

Net effect: the public Harvest skill depends on two unpublished pieces — the _HARVEST skill and a private Arbol backend — for a step it declares mandatory.

Reproduction

On a public install, run Harvest on any source. Mining Steps 1–6 complete normally; Step 7 fails because ~/.claude/skills/_HARVEST/Tools/harvest.ts does not exist. Per L89 ("a harvest is not complete until the note is written or the failure is surfaced"), the run can only ever end in a surfaced failure, never a success. Observed first-hand twice while running the skill.

Suggested fixes (any one resolves it)

1. Ship a public ingestion path. Provide a self-contained Harvest ingestion tool that writes a KNOWLEDGE note directly to MEMORY/KNOWLEDGE/ with the documented typed-related: schema — no Arbol, no _HARVEST. This is the highest-value fix; it makes the skill actually usable end to end.
2. Make Step 7 gracefully degrade. Keep the Arbol path when ARBOL_HARVEST_API_BASE and _HARVEST are present, but fall back to a local note-writer (or a clearly-labelled "ingestion skipped — no public backend configured") otherwise, instead of mandating a private skill.
3. At minimum, document the dependency. State in Harvest/SKILL.md that Step 7 requires private infrastructure (_HARVEST + an Arbol harvest endpoint) and is a no-op on public installs, so users aren't left with a skill that can't complete.

Affected files

• LifeOS/install/skills/Harvest/Workflows/Harvest.md (Step 7, L84–L91)
• LifeOS/install/skills/Harvest/SKILL.md (L10, L28, L39, L46)
• LifeOS/install/LIFEOS/TOOLS/HarvestExecutor.ts (Arbol dependency, L29 / L153)

[danielmiessler]

You're right, and thank you for the line-level receipts. The resolution already in source is removal, not repair: skills/Harvest/ was deleted on 2026-07-18 — the public Harvest skill was private-dependent by design (the _HARVEST pipeline and its Arbol backend aren't part of the release), so the capability folded back into the private side. The staged next release ships no Harvest skill and no dangling references (swept today), and a retired-capability registry entry now makes any future reference to the shipped skill path a release-blocking gate failure rather than something a human has to catch. The broken Step 7 dies with the next release.