sync-claude-code-plugins

User request: $ARGUMENTS

Sync prompt-engineering plugin components from a local sibling clone of claude-code-plugins into this repo's .claude/ directory. The plugin OWNS only the files it ships — other content in .claude/agents/ and .claude/skills/ (manifest-dev sync, KB skills, anything else) must be left alone.

Source & Target

Role	Path
Source repo	../claude-code-plugins (relative to this repo's root)
Source components	<source_repo>/claude-plugins/prompt-engineering/
Target	.claude/ in this repo
Tracking file	.claude/.claude-code-plugins-sync.json

Sync scope

Component	Source dir	Target dir
Agents	agents/	.claude/agents/
Skills	skills/	.claude/skills/

prompt-engineering ships no hooks today.

Territory model

Deletion invariant: only items in tracked (the previously-synced set) are eligible for removal when they disappear upstream. Items never in tracked are invisible — that's how project-local content stays safe.

The tracked set lives in .claude/.claude-code-plugins-sync.json:

{
  "version": 1,
  "last_synced_at": "ISO-8601 timestamp",
  "agents": ["prompt-reviewer.md", "..."],
  "skills": ["prompt-engineering", "..."]
}

First run (file missing): tracked is empty, no deletions happen, file is written at end.

Sync algorithm

Pre-flight: abort if <source_repo>/claude-plugins/prompt-engineering/ is missing — silent absence is a misconfigured path, not upstream removal. Do not delete on this signal. If the source is a clean git repo, git pull --ff-only first; surface a warning and proceed if pulling fails.

For each component (agents/skills):

• Copy every source item over its target path. Skip if target is a symlink. Skip retired items (see denylist below) even when an older upstream checkout still ships them.
• Re-apply local metadata after copying: every non-symlink synced skill's SKILL.md must carry metadata: / internal: true in its frontmatter — add it back when the upstream copy lacks it. Synced skills are repo-maintenance tooling in this repo; the flag keeps skill pickers and directory scrapers from listing them as product skills.
• Delete items in tracked − source from target. Skip if target is a symlink, doesn't exist, or is the sync-claude-code-plugins skill itself.
• Refresh .claude/.claude-code-plugins-sync.json with the current source listing minus the denylist.

Source listing excludes README.md and .claude-plugin/ (plugin metadata, not content).

Retirement denylist (never copy or track, regardless of upstream): agents/prompt-reviewer.md. manifest-dev-tools ships its own review-prompt skill (plugin-owned symlink at .claude/skills/review-prompt) and manifest-dev ships zero agents, so the upstream prompt-engineering prompt-reviewer agent must not be reintroduced — it is already removed from .claude/agents/ and dropped from the tracked set.

.agents mirror

After each sync, ensure .agents/skills/<name> is a symlink to ../../.claude/skills/<name> for every tracked skill, and remove the symlink for any skill removed from tracked. This lets non-Claude coding agents (Codex, etc.) read the same skills without duplicating content. Only skills are mirrored — .agents/agents/ is out of scope.

• Create the symlink if missing.
• If .agents/skills/<name> exists and is not a symlink, skip it — that's project-local content, don't clobber.
• Create .agents/skills/ if missing, but never .agents/ itself (the user opts in by creating it).

Gotchas

• Upstream copies drop the internal flag. Upstream claude-code-plugins skills ship without metadata: internal: true; a plain copy silently reverts the flag on the non-symlink synced skills (observed 2026-07-05). The re-apply step above exists for this — do not skip it.

• Source must exist: missing source path means abort, not "delete all tracked items."

• Nested skills directory: source skills live at skills/prompt-engineering/, skills/compress-prompt/, etc. Copy each skill directory into .claude/skills/<skill-name>/ — don't copy the outer skills/ folder or you get .claude/skills/skills/.

• review-prompt is plugin-owned, not upstream: manifest-dev-tools ships its own review-prompt skill, symlinked at .claude/skills/review-prompt. The upstream prompt-engineering plugin also ships a review-prompt, but the "skip if target is a symlink" rule above means this sync leaves the plugin's symlink alone (it neither overwrites nor deletes it). Do not re-add review-prompt to the tracking file.

• Symlinks look like directories to cp/rm/find: a symlinked target overwritten by cp -R corrupts the linked plugin's source files; a symlinked directory deleted by rm -rf removes the link, not the plugin, but a recursive find that follows the link will. Use [ -L path ] before every overwrite and every delete.

Output

Summary table per component (agents/skills): items added, updated, removed, symlinks skipped, and removals refused (e.g. due to symlink). Show the net change to the tracking file.

Never

• Overwrite, remove, or follow into symlinks under .claude/ — check [ -L path ] before every copy, delete, or recursive descent
• Replace a non-symlink at .agents/skills/<name> — leave project-local content alone
• Create .agents/ itself (only manage .agents/skills/<name> entries inside an existing .agents/)
• Delete items not in the tracked set — even if they're not in source
• Delete the sync-claude-code-plugins skill
• Treat a missing source path as upstream removal — abort instead
• Copy plugin metadata (README.md, .claude-plugin/) or the source repo's own .claude/ directory
• Modify the source repo (other than the optional git pull --ff-only)