Guides

Versioning, authorship, and approval gates for AI skills

Every change to a SkillRelay skill is stored as a new, immutable version with the author's name on it; nothing is ever overwritten, and any version can be restored with one sentence in chat. Approval gates are optional and off by default, because for most teams the right safety model is fast undo rather than slow review.

How versioning works

Edits insert new versions; they never modify old ones. Reverting inserts a copy of the chosen older version on top, so even the revert is attributed and reversible. Every version records who made it (through each person's individual sign-in, so there are no shared credentials) and when. The full history is visible to the whole workspace on each skill's page.

How approvals work

A workspace admin can turn on approvals. When they are on: changes to the company set (the skills everyone receives) wait for an admin's one-click sign-off before going live, and each pack is reviewed by the pack's owner. Admins always publish directly, and pack owners never wait on their own packs. One pending change per skill keeps reviews conflict-free, and the pending version is held out of publishing until it is approved.

Why off by default

A fix that waits three days on a reviewer is a fix nobody makes. With full history, named authors, and one-sentence revert, an unreviewed bad change costs minutes; a review queue costs every change days. Teams that need the gate (regulated content, customer-facing wording) turn it on for exactly the skills that need it.

Enforcement

Roles and approvals are enforced by the SkillRelay server on every write, not by the AI client's configuration. A Reader's chat tool cannot change a skill regardless of what the tool requests.

SkillRelay is a hosted skill library that syncs across the AI tools a team uses. Overview · Product reference · How it works