Adopt items you placed by hand

Agent homes often hold skills, agents, and rules that mind did not install: files you wrote yourself or another tool put there. mind lists these as unmanaged items, can remove them, and can move one into a git repo you own so it is versioned and managed from then on.

mind recall                         # unmanaged items are listed at the end
mind absorb skill:my-skill          # move it into a source you own, then manage it
mind forget skill:old-experiment    # or delete it

What counts as unmanaged

Any entry in a lobe’s skills/, agents/, rules/, commands/, or workflows/ directory that is not one of mind’s own links. A path is always one or the other. An item present in several lobes is listed once with every path it occupies. Tools and resources live only in the store, so they are never unmanaged.

List them

• mind recall lists them after your sources, under “unmanaged: not installed by mind”, with each item’s kind:name and lobe paths. --kind filters them; --source hides them, since they have no source.
• mind probe includes them in its listing and search. In --json each carries "unmanaged": true and no source or hash. recall --json covers managed items only.
• The terminal UI shows an Unmanaged group.

Move one into a source you own

mind absorb <ref> takes one unmanaged item, moves it into a git repo you own, commits it there, and replaces the lobe entry with a managed link. From then on it upgrades, syncs, and forgets like anything else.

mind absorb skill:my-skill
mind absorb agent:reviewer --to ~/dev/my-agent-library

The ref must name exactly one item; globs are refused. Add a kind when a name exists in more than one.

Where it goes

The first of these that is set wins:

1. --to <path>
2. the MIND_ABSORB_TO environment variable
3. absorb-to in ~/.mind/config.toml

With none set, an interactive run asks, offering ~/.mind/personal (created and git init-ed on demand), and then offers to save your answer as absorb-to. With --yes and no destination, it uses and saves ~/.mind/personal. A non-interactive run with no destination is an error.

The destination must already be a git repo, except ~/.mind/personal. The item lands at its conventional path (skills/<name>/, agents/<name>.md, rules/<name>.md, commands/<name>.md, workflows/<name>.js) and is committed as absorb <kind>:<name>. mind melds the destination first if it is not already a source. If the path is taken in the destination, absorb stops; --force overwrites it.

What it asks first

If the item sits in several lobes, absorb takes the content from one and deletes the other copies so the managed link can replace them. It lists what it will move and delete and asks once, even for a single lobe, since it deletes files you own. --yes skips the question; a non-interactive run without --yes changes nothing.

A failure before the install finishes leaves the original file in place and nothing recorded. absorb never loses the file.

After absorbing, the item’s name follows the destination source’s namespace, if it has one.

Remove unmanaged items

mind forget skill:old-experiment          # one item, by exact kind:name
mind forget --unmanaged 'skill:*'         # every unmanaged skill
mind forget --unmanaged                   # every unmanaged item in every lobe

forget deletes the file or directory itself, not a link. It always asks first and says that the item is not managed by mind; --yes skips the question, and a non-interactive run without --yes removes nothing.

An ordinary glob such as forget '*' matches managed items only, so it never deletes your own files. Unmanaged items are reached by exact kind:name, or by --unmanaged, which matches unmanaged items only and can never remove a managed one.