Team Directory — shared skills, personas & prompts (local folder)

Nyia Keeper shares team resources through a team directory: a regular folder on disk that you keep in sync however you like (git, Dropbox, NFS, a symlink — your choice). Nyia only reads it. It carries skills, personas (agents), and prompt overlays — the resources the assistant uses. (It does not carry config values: command-mode and the RAG model must never be silently inherited from a shared source.)

How to sync it is up to you, and that's the review gate. If you keep the folder in git, your own git pull is where you see the diff before new team content reaches your assistants — a deliberate human checkpoint.

Trust model (honest). Shared team content is a trust decision, the same as trusting any shared codebase you point an AI tool at: a teammate with write access can add content, and no tool can tell you in advance whether that content is well-intentioned — this is the git-shared-repo + AI threat model, not something specific to Nyia. What Nyia does protect against, today, is the propagation mechanism being abused: a shared item cannot smuggle a symlink or a traversal path to exfiltrate files from your host (see the Security model). Content-level review of shared skills/prompts is planned next (an on-device guard model).

Quick Start

1. Create a shared directory with the expected structure:

mkdir -p /path/to/team-shared/{skills,agents,prompts}

1. Configure Nyia Keeper to use it:

nyia config global team_dir=/path/to/team-shared

1. Verify it works:

nyia status           # Shows team directory info
nyia-claude --list-skills   # Team skills appear under "Team skills"
nyia-claude --list-agents   # Team agents appear under "Team agents"

Directory Structure

The team directory follows the same layout as .nyiakeeper/shared/:

/path/to/team-shared/
├── skills/              # Shared skills (each needs SKILL.md)
│   ├── code-review/
│   │   └── SKILL.md
│   └── pair-review/
│       └── SKILL.md
├── agents/              # Shared agent personas
│   ├── reviewer.md      # Claude agent (Markdown)
│   └── architect.md
└── prompts/             # Shared prompt overlays
    └── team-guidelines.md

Skills

Each skill is a subdirectory containing a SKILL.md file. Nyia's own built-ins are named nyia-* and are refreshed on every upgrade; to customize one under its own name, put your version in the team directory or in the project's .nyiakeeper/shared/skills/ (a copy from there is user-owned and never replaced) — a same-name copy in your global skills directory would be overwritten by the installer. Skills are automatically discovered and listed by --list-skills. They are propagated to each assistant's project directory at launch (no-clobber: existing project skills take precedence).

Agents

Agent personas are assistant-specific files placed directly in the agents/ directory. File formats vary by assistant:

Assistant	Format	Example
Claude	*.md	reviewer.md
OpenCode	*.md, *.json	architect.md
Vibe	*.toml	debugger.toml
Codex	Config-based	(uses ~/.codex/config.toml sections)
Gemini	Not yet supported	--

Prompts

Prompt overlays placed in prompts/ are propagated to each assistant at launch. Use these for team-wide coding guidelines, review checklists, or domain-specific instructions.

No config/. A team directory does not carry config values (command-mode, RAG model). Those are deliberately excluded so a shared source can never silently change how much the agent is allowed to do — set them locally with nyia config.

Precedence

Resources are resolved in strict precedence order. Higher-precedence sources win:

1. Project-local    (.claude/skills/, .claude/agents/, etc.)
2. Project-shared   (.nyiakeeper/shared/skills/, etc.)
3. Team             (team_dir/skills/, team_dir/agents/, etc.)
4. Global user      (~/.config/nyiakeeper/skills/, etc.)

This means: - A project-local skill named deploy shadows a team skill with the same name. - A project-shared agent named reviewer shadows a team agent with the same name. - Team resources shadow global user resources.

Configuration

Setting the team directory

# Set for all projects (global config)
nyia config global team_dir=/path/to/team-shared

# View current configuration
nyia config global --list

The key is stored as NYIA_TEAM_DIR in ~/.config/nyiakeeper/config/nyia.conf.

Checking team status

nyia status

This shows: - Whether a team directory is configured - Whether the directory exists on disk - Which subdirectories are present (skills, agents, prompts)

Security

• The team directory is read-only from Nyia Keeper's perspective -- it never writes to it.
• No secrets or credentials should be placed in the team directory.
• Propagation is guarded (see the Security model): a shared skill/agent/prompt that is a symlink, contains a nested symlink, or uses a traversal path is refused — it cannot be used to read files from your host. This is a structural guard, not content review.
• Content is a trust decision. The guard above stops the mechanism being abused; it does not judge whether a shared prompt's text is safe. Treat a shared source like any shared repo you'd point an AI tool at. On-device content review is planned next.

Sync Strategies

Nyia Keeper does not manage synchronization of the team directory. Common approaches:

Strategy	Pros	Cons
Git repository	Version history, PR review	Requires git workflow
Dropbox/Google Drive	Automatic sync, no setup	No version control
NFS/SMB mount	Real-time access	Requires network infrastructure
Symlink to monorepo subdirectory	Zero-copy, always current	Ties to monorepo

Team news (/nyia-whatsup)

/nyia-whatsup is a different class — news, not resources. The team directory (above) makes resources available; /nyia-whatsup makes changes to them discoverable: when a teammate ships a new skill, edits a prompt, or changes a convention, they publish a short news entry (committed to the project's git), and everyone else sees it instead of finding out by accident.

"Nyia" (にゃ) is the cat that watches your code — /nyia-whatsup is the cat telling you what changed.

Commands

Command	What it does
/nyia-whatsup	Show news entries you haven't read yet, newest/most severe first
/nyia-whatsup add	Publish a news entry (draft → confirm → commit)
/nyia-whatsup list	List all entries with a read / unread / hidden marker
/nyia-whatsup ack <id>	Acknowledge an entry (dismisses a breaking warning)
/nyia-whatsup hide <id>	Permanently hide an entry ("not for me")

How entries are stored

Each entry is a single markdown file with YAML frontmatter, committed to the project so the team shares it via git:

.nyiakeeper/whatsup/
├── entries/2026/06/2026-06-04-a3f-001.md   # one file per entry (committed)
└── .seen.json                              # your per-machine read state (gitignored)

One file per entry means two people can publish at the same time without merge conflicts. Your read state (.seen.json) is per-machine and never committed.

Outside a Nyia project (no .nyiakeeper/), /nyia-whatsup still works in standalone mode, storing entries under .whatsup/ with manual invocation only.

Severity levels

• info — inline note, low priority.
• important — pulled to the top of the list.
• breaking — shown in a loud visual box and stays flagged on every read until you run /nyia-whatsup ack <id>. V1 is a visual warning only; it does not block.

Automatic news at session start (opt-in)

/nyia-whatsup integrates with the /nyia-kickoff and /nyia-checkpoint skills, but only when enabled in config (default: off):

# Enable whatsup and surface unread news automatically at session start
nyia config global whatsup_enabled=true
nyia config global whatsup_auto_read=kickoff

Config key	Values	Default	Effect
whatsup_enabled (NYIA_WHATSUP_ENABLED)	true | false	false	Master switch for lifecycle hooks
whatsup_auto_read (NYIA_WHATSUP_AUTO_READ)	kickoff | never	never	Show unread news during /nyia-kickoff

When enabled, /nyia-checkpoint also detects when a session changed meta-files (skills, prompts, shared config) and offers to publish a /nyia-whatsup entry.

Security

• No secrets in entries. Entries are committed and shared, so /nyia-whatsup add summarizes changes by file path and your own words only — it never dumps config, prompt, credential, or .env contents into an entry.
• Publishing stages only the new entry file (never git add .), and shows you the staged diff before committing.

Troubleshooting

"Team dir configured but does not exist"

The path in your config does not exist on disk. Check:

nyia config global --list   # Verify the path
ls -la /path/to/team-shared # Check if directory exists

"Team dir configured but has no content"

The directory exists but contains none of the expected subdirectories (skills/, agents/, prompts/). Create at least one:

mkdir -p /path/to/team-shared/skills

Team skills/agents not appearing

1. Verify the team directory is configured: nyia config global --list
2. Check that skills have a SKILL.md file in their subdirectory
3. Check that agent files use the correct format for your assistant
4. Check precedence: a project-local resource with the same name takes priority

Testing team sharing (helper script)

A self-contained smoke test verifies the whole feature end-to-end without touching your real config (it runs in an isolated temporary NYIAKEEPER_HOME).

File: scripts/test-team-sharing.sh

Run it (host or inside the Vagrant VM, from the repo root):

scripts/test-team-sharing.sh                              # dev edition (./bin)
NYIA_BIN_DIR=dist/runtime/bin scripts/test-team-sharing.sh   # runtime edition
NYIA_ASSISTANT=codex scripts/test-team-sharing.sh            # a different assistant (default: claude)

Exit code 0 = all checks passed.

What it checks: 1. nyia config global team_dir=… sets the team directory, and nyia config view shows it. 2. nyia status surfaces the team directory. 3. nyia-<assistant> --list-skills / --list-agents discover the sample team skill/agent. 4. A project-shared skill of the same name resolves (project-over-team precedence path).

In the Vagrant VM: the repo is mounted at /dockerized-assistants-src; run /dockerized-assistants-src/scripts/test-team-sharing.sh (or cd there first). Use NYIA_BIN_DIR=/dockerized-assistants-src/dist/runtime/bin to exercise the shipped (runtime) edition.

Note: nyia config get <key> currently supports only home/config/data, not the registered config keys — use nyia config view to inspect key values. (Tracked for the config-dispatcher convergence work.)