Onboard IsaacLab skills for NVCARPS / Isaac Skills catalog

[matthewtrepte]

Summary

• Adds 13 IsaacLab user skills (skills/user/isaaclab-*) and internal skills formatted for the Isaac Skills catalog (NVCARPS)
• Adds .agents/skills/ and .claude/skills discovery aliases for agent auto-discovery
• Adds skills-check.yml CI gate running SkillEvaluator Tier 1/2A/2B/3 on every PR touching skills/**
• Adds tools/skills/cli.py local validator with 27 regression tests
• Extends validator to accept developer-audience skills; scopes license/metadata.author to user-audience only
• Fixes three frontmatter YAML parser bugs in the local validator

Skills added

Skill	Audience
isaaclab-building-environments	user
isaaclab-converting-direct-to-manager	user
isaaclab-debugging-rl-training	user
isaaclab-diagnosing-joint-poses	user
isaaclab-migrating-from-isaac-gym	user
isaaclab-planning-manipulation-tasks	user
isaaclab-preparing-assets-for-newton	user
isaaclab-randomizing-with-events	user
isaaclab-selecting-backends	user
isaaclab-training-multi-gpu	user
isaaclab-training-rl-agents	user
isaaclab-using-presets	user
isaaclab-using-sensors-actuators	user
coding-style	user
changelog-fragments	user
pr-workflow	_internal
install	_internal
setup-troubleshooting	_internal
migrate-2x-to-3x	_internal

Test plan

• python3 tools/skills/cli.py check passes all 23 skills locally
• 27/27 unit tests pass (tools/skills/test/)
• SkillEvaluator Tier 1 passes all 13 user skills locally
• CI check-skills job passes
• CI validate-skills job passes (requires NVIDIA internal network for SkillEvaluator)

[greptile-apps]

Confidence Score: 4/5

This PR should not merge until the SkillEvaluator job fails when its required internal registry is unavailable; the stale documentation links should also be corrected.

Findings

1.  Validation gate silently skips ▶
2.  Relocation leaves broken links ▶

Summary

This PR restructures Isaac Lab’s agent-skill catalog, adds catalog metadata and evaluation fixtures, extends the local validator, and introduces an internal SkillEvaluator CI job.

• Renames public skills to the isaaclab-* layout and relocates repository-only skills under skills/_internal.
• Adds and retargets native agent-discovery aliases.
• Adds JSON evaluation suites and expands frontmatter/evaluation validation.
• Adds PR-file discovery and Tier 1/2A/2B/3 CI evaluation.
• The CI gate currently succeeds without evaluation when its internal registry is unavailable, and several documentation links were not updated after relocation.

Diagram

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
  PR[Pull request touching skills] --> Local[Local validator and tests]
  PR --> Runner[Self-hosted GPU runner]
  Runner --> Registry{Internal registry reachable?}
  Registry -->|No| Skip[Warn and skip SkillEvaluator]
  Skip --> Green[Job succeeds without evaluation]
  Registry -->|Yes| Detect[Determine touched user skills]
  Detect --> Evaluate[Tier 1 / 2A / 3 per skill]
  Evaluate --> Similarity[Tier 2B repository similarity]
  Similarity --> Result[Pass or fail job]

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_{Reviews (1) · Last reviewed commit: "Address review bot: targeted registry sk..."}

[greptile-apps]

Validation gate silently skips

When the selected self-hosted runner cannot resolve the internal registry, this step only emits a warning. The installation and all subsequent SkillEvaluator steps are then skipped, so the job succeeds without running any Tier 1/2A/2B/3 validation. A runner networking or labeling problem therefore silently disables the new CI gate instead of blocking the affected PR.

[greptile-apps]

Relocation leaves broken links

This alias now targets the relocated _internal skill, but related source-of-truth documentation still points to removed skills/user/* and skills/developer/* paths. The setup, migration, and contribution pages therefore contain broken links and direct maintainers to obsolete locations. Please update those references as part of the move.

Note: If this suggestion doesn't match your team's coding style, reply to this and let me know. I'll remember it for next time!

[isaaclab-review-bot]

Isaac Lab Review Bot

The catalog-style skill layout, discovery aliases, documentation links, validator extensions, and PR-scoped SkillEvaluator integration are broadly coherent. One CI health-check issue should be corrected: skillevaluator doctor cannot inspect the inference credential because that secret is not provided to its step.

• Design and architecture: The skills/user versus skills/_internal split and PR-scoped SkillEvaluator workflow are consistent with the catalog boundary. The overall structure is sound, but the workflow’s diagnostic stage should receive the same inference credential as the validation stage so it can meaningfully verify the configured service access.
• API: The existing skill names exposed through discovery aliases are preserved while repository paths and cross-references are updated. The validator’s new license and metadata.author requirements are scoped to user-facing skills, with no accepted API compatibility concern.
• Implementation: The nested-frontmatter and JSON evaluation validation changes are supported by focused tests. In .github/workflows/skills-check.yml, add NVIDIA_INFERENCE_KEY: ${{ secrets.NVIDIA_INFERENCE_API_KEY }} to the install/doctor step; otherwise skillevaluator doctor cannot observe the credential it is expected to diagnose and will produce an uninformative warning.

Minor fixes needed. Posted 1 actionable finding inline.

Automated review; human maintainers own approval decisions.

[isaaclab-review-bot]

🔵 Suggestion · Implementation — doctor step lacks the key it validates

skillevaluator doctor runs inside the install step, whose env: block only sets SKILLEVALUATOR_VERSION. NVIDIA_INFERENCE_KEY is first defined two steps later, so the doctor check can never observe the credential and will permanently emit the "check NVIDIA_INFERENCE_KEY" warning, making this health check uninformative. Add NVIDIA_INFERENCE_KEY: ${{ secrets.NVIDIA_INFERENCE_API_KEY }} to this step's env.

[matthewtrepte]

run-ci