Skill Dependencies

Track and manage dependencies between OpenClaw skills. Scan skills for dependencies, visualize skill trees, detect circular dependencies, and manage skill versioning. Use when analyzing skill relationships, checking which skills depend on others, or managing skill installations.

Audits

Pass

ClawScanReview

Agentic behavior and permission review.

Static analysisPass

Pattern checks against bundled files.

VirusTotalPass

Multi-engine malware detections and file reputation.

Install

openclaw skills install skill-deps

Skill Dependencies

Manage dependencies between OpenClaw skills — like npm for skills.

Version Constraints

Supports semver-style version constraints:

depends:
  - weather@>=1.0.0      # Version 1.0.0 or higher
  - calendar@^2.0.0      # Compatible with 2.x.x
  - browser@~1.2.0       # Approximately 1.2.x
  - coding-agent@*       # Any version
  - github@1.5.0         # Exact version

Conflict Detection

Declare skills that cannot coexist:

conflicts:
  - old-weather          # Cannot use with old-weather
  - legacy-calendar

Concepts

Declaring Dependencies

In a skill's SKILL.md frontmatter:

---
name: my-skill
description: Does something cool
depends:
  - weather          # Requires weather skill
  - coding-agent     # Requires coding-agent skill
optional:
  - github           # Enhanced if github skill present
---

Dependency Types

depends — Required skills (fail if missing)
optional — Enhanced functionality if present
conflicts — Cannot be used with these skills

Commands

Scan Skills

# Scan all installed skills for dependencies
./scripts/scan-skills.sh

# Scan specific skill
./scripts/scan-skills.sh weather

Dependency Tree

# Show full dependency tree
./scripts/skill-tree.sh my-skill

# Output:
# my-skill
# ├── weather (required)
# │   └── (no dependencies)
# └── coding-agent (required)
#     └── github (optional)

Check Missing

# Find skills with unmet dependencies
./scripts/check-deps.sh

Registry Format

Skills can declare their metadata in skill.json:

{
  "name": "my-skill",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "depends": {
    "weather": ">=1.0.0",
    "coding-agent": "*"
  },
  "optional": {
    "github": ">=2.0.0"
  }
}

Skill Locations

Scans these directories:

/usr/lib/node_modules/openclaw/skills/ — Built-in skills
~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/ — User skills
./skills/ — Project-local skills

ClawHub Registry Integration

Install skills from clawhub.com:

# Install a skill (auto-resolves dependencies)
./scripts/skill-install.sh weather

# Install with specific version
./scripts/skill-install.sh weather@1.2.0

# Search for skills
./scripts/skill-search.sh "calendar"

# List installed vs available
./scripts/skill-list.sh --outdated

Auto-Resolution

When installing a skill with dependencies:

$ ./scripts/skill-install.sh travel-planner

📦 Resolving dependencies for travel-planner@1.0.0...
  ├── weather@>=1.0.0 → weather@1.2.3 ✅
  ├── calendar@^2.0 → calendar@2.1.0 ✅
  └── browser (optional) → browser@3.0.0 ✅

🔍 Checking conflicts...
  └── No conflicts found ✅

📥 Installing 4 skills...
  ✅ weather@1.2.3
  ✅ calendar@2.1.0
  ✅ browser@3.0.0
  ✅ travel-planner@1.0.0

Done! Installed 4 skills.

Commands Summary

Command	Description
`scan-skills.sh`	List all skills with their deps
`skill-tree.sh <name>`	Show dependency tree
`check-deps.sh`	Find missing dependencies
`skill-install.sh <name>`	Install from ClawHub
`skill-search.sh <query>`	Search registry
`check-conflicts.sh`	Detect conflicts