Unmanaged items

An agent home (lobe) often holds skills, agents, and rules that mind did not install: files written by hand or placed by another tool. mind surfaces these as unmanaged items so the listing reflects everything the agent actually sees, and lets forget remove one after a distinct confirmation.

Tools are store-only (not linked into a lobe by default), so unmanaged detection covers skills, agents, and rules only (spec UNM-1).

What counts as unmanaged

A lobe entry is unmanaged when its path is not recorded in any manifest item’s links (spec UNM-1). A managed symlink and an unmanaged file cannot occupy the same path simultaneously; a given path is always one or the other.

mind scans every configured lobe. An item present in more than one lobe is one logical item that records each occupied path.

Listing unmanaged items

recall

mind recall (no arguments) lists unmanaged items after the melded sources, in a group labeled “unmanaged: not installed by mind”, one row per item showing kind:name and the lobe path(s) it occupies (spec UNM-2). No flag is needed to see them; --kind filters them the same way it filters managed items; --source excludes them because they have no source.

recall --json covers managed sources only (its schema is unchanged); unmanaged items are exposed machine-readably through probe --json (spec UNM-2, UNM-3).

probe

mind probe includes unmanaged items in its listing and substring search (spec UNM-3). In the non-interactive listing each unmanaged row is labeled. In --json output each carries "unmanaged": true with no source or hash field. --kind filters; --source excludes them.

In the interactive TUI, unmanaged items appear under an Unmanaged group node, browsable and searchable like a source’s items (spec UNM-6). See Interactive TUI.

Forgetting an unmanaged item

mind forget <kind:name>

When the ref resolves to an unmanaged item, forget removes the lobe entry itself (the file or directory the user owns) and leaves the manifest unchanged (spec UNM-4).

Exact ref only. An unmanaged item is matched only by its exact kind:name. A glob such as forget '*' removes managed items only and never deletes a user’s own files (spec UNM-4).

Confirmation required. Every unmanaged removal prompts first, regardless of count. The prompt states explicitly that the item is not managed by mind and that removal deletes the user’s own file or directory, not a symlink (spec UNM-5).

• --yes proceeds after displaying that statement.
• A non-TTY run without --yes refuses with ConfirmationRequired and removes nothing (spec UNM-5).

The --force / clobber flags do not apply here; nothing is being overwritten.

When a bare name matches both a managed and an unmanaged item, add a kind prefix to disambiguate (for example skill:review vs agent:review). See Commands for the full forget verb reference.

Bulk removal of unmanaged items

mind forget --unmanaged [<ref>]

--unmanaged scopes removal to unmanaged lobe items only – the deliberate opt-in inverse of the default, where a glob matches managed items only. Managed (mind-installed) items are never matched in this mode; it cannot delete a mind-installed link or store copy.

Ref forms.

• With a glob <ref> (e.g. 'skill:*'), every matching unmanaged item is removed. A kind prefix composes with the glob.
• With an exact kind:name, that single item is removed.
• With no <ref>, every unmanaged item across all configured lobes is removed.

A <ref> that matches no unmanaged item is an error.

Confirmation. Before removing anything, mind lists all matched items and asks once to confirm, making clear these are not managed by mind and that removal deletes the user’s own files or directories (not symlinks). --yes (-y) skips the prompt. A non-TTY run without --yes refuses with ConfirmationRequired and removes nothing.

The manifest is not touched; these items were never in it. The --force / clobber flags do not apply.