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SlopCopSlopCop

The agent skill

The slopcop binary carries the agent skill that teaches a coding agent how to run slopcop: when to check, which flags matter, how to read the report, what each exit code means, and what to do about every service error code. It is the file at skills/slopcop/SKILL.md in the repository, with a small agents/openai.yaml beside it that gives Codex the skill’s display name and default prompt.

Where it goes

Section titled “Where it goes”

slopcop init installs the skill into each well-known skills directory whose harness is present, and names what it did:

LocationHarness
~/.agents/skills/slopcop/Codex, opencode
~/.claude/skills/slopcop/Claude Code, opencode
$CODEX_HOME/skills/slopcop/, or ~/.codex/skills/slopcop/Codex home

A skill that is already there is left alone by init, so running it again is safe. slopcop init --no-skill skips the install and any update of it.

How it stays current

Section titled “How it stays current”

slopcop login and every check also install the skill in those directories, rewriting one that differs from the skill bundled into the binary, so an agent follows the instructions of the slopcop version it runs. Each install records the version that wrote it, and what each file held, in .slopcop-skill.json in the skill folder.

An update names the version it replaces, the new one, and the files that changed:

slopcop: updated the slopcop skill at ~/.claude/skills/slopcop from v0.0.9 to v0.0.10 (changed: SKILL.md). Reread it if you loaded the old one.

It removes the files the new skill no longer has. A check’s json and sarif reports carry the same update under skillUpdated, so an agent that ran the check knows its loaded copy of the instructions is out of date and rereads SKILL.md before acting on the report.

Local edits are kept

Section titled “Local edits are kept”

A skill with local edits, one that matches neither its record nor any release, is copied first to skill-backups/<harness>-<time> next to the slopcop configuration, outside every skills directory so no harness loads it as a second skill, and the notice says where. If you want to keep your own version of the instructions, put it in a skill with another name; the slopcop skill directory is managed by the CLI.