New skills

[justinmclean]

Summary

What

Spec-only changes that close the gap between the documented skill
catalogue and tools/spec-loop/specs/, then refresh the implementation
plan off the new gaps. No skill or tool code changes; nothing runtime.

New specs

• release-management-lifecycle.md (proposed, Drafting). The 14-step,
  10-skill release family was fully designed in docs/release-management/
  but absent from the loop specs, so the build loop couldn't see it. This
  brings it in, mirroring security-issue-lifecycle.md, with the two
  non-negotiable boundaries recorded: the agent never holds the signing
  key and never publishes the release.
• project-agnosticism.md (experimental, infra). Captures the
  standing de-ASF-coupling audit and the mechanism for keeping skills
  usable outside the ASF: placeholders for values, adapters for system
  swaps, and capability/backend flags for workflow branches that differ
  by ecosystem (the model already proven in release-management). ASF stays
  the default profile.

Recorded gaps (Known gaps for the plan pass to pick up)

• mentoring-mode.md: family is one skill deep; first-contribution
  welcome and contributor-to-committer path tracker undesigned.
• triage-mode.md: missing general-issue dedupe / stale-handling /
  backlog dashboard; contributor-growth skills not a formalised family
  (PMC nomination, emeritus, offboarding); repo-health audits a one-off
  around ci-runner-audit. Also adds pr-management-quick-merge to
  Where it lives.
• meta-and-quality-tooling.md: add the missing optimize-skill.
• adapters.md: cross-reference to the new project-agnosticism spec.

Plan refresh (IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md)

Reconciled against the new specs. Seven prioritised work items: two
standalone release-management skills (release-vote-draft,
release-announce-draft), issue-stale-sweep, mentoring-welcome, an
ASF-coupling advisory lint folded into skill-and-tool-validator, a
drafting-spec sync, and a non-ASF adopter profile fixture. Deferrals are
noted explicitly (capability-flag vocabulary, dedupe/backlog sequencing,
repo-health family) so later plan passes don't silently drop them.

Why

The catalogue had grown past what the specs described, so the loop's plan
pass was working from an incomplete picture. These specs make the gaps
visible and turn them into ordered, buildable work.

Type of change

• Skill change (.claude/skills/<name>/) — eval fixtures updated below
• Tool / bridge contract (tools/<system>/*.md)
• Python package (tools/*/ with pyproject.toml)
• Groovy reference impl
• Cross-cutting (RFC, AGENTS.md, sandbox, privacy-LLM)
• Documentation (docs/, README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md)
• Project template (projects/_template/)
• CI / dev loop (prek, workflows, validators)
• Other:

Test plan

• prek run --all-files passes
• For Python packages touched: uv run pytest / ruff check / mypy passes
• For Groovy bridges touched: command-line invocation tested end-to-end
• For skill changes: eval suite passes for the affected skill
  (PYTHONPATH=tools/skill-evals/src python3 -m skill_evals.runner tools/skill-evals/evals/<skill>/)
• For skill behaviour changes: a new or updated eval fixture is included in this PR
  (a regression test for the bug fixed / the behaviour added — see CONTRIBUTING.md)
• Other:

[justinmclean]

Correctness

[advisory] release-management-lifecycle.md:8 — mode: Drafting but the spec text calls it "a family spanning Triage and Drafting". Single-value mode can't express both; add a note or extend the spec format.
[advisory] Work-item validation blocks point at eval dirs that don't exist yet (release-vote-draft, issue-stale-sweep, etc.) — intentional acceptance targets, but a reader may misread them as broken paths.

Conventions

[advisory] IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md has no SPDX header (pre-existing; #474 will catch it). Both new spec files have correct headers.
[advisory] Validation/pytest commands use --project (your notes prefer --directory for skill-evals and warn against --project for pytest) — but mirrors existing sibling specs, so no regression.

Security

no findings.