dotHuman
Protocol Handbook v0.3

Pseudo Skills

Depth

A loosely-bound, evolving how-to that does the job of a Claude Skill without the rigid binding, changing over time as conditions shift.

Captured as markdown with a version-notes changelog that compounds one dated Lesson per real run. The "pseudo" is the pseudocode sense — skill-shaped, expressed loosely and tool-independently — and it predates Claude Skills.

How it matures

A pseudoskill is the loose, middle stage of an arc that runs as you work Goals on a dotHumanized project:

  • A Goal is worked, producing Lessons — dated takeaways from real runs.
  • Lessons accumulate and cohere into a pseudoskill — a loose, evolving how-to.
  • When the pseudoskill stabilizes (stops changing run-to-run), it formalizes into a Skill — fixed and packaged.
Goal  ──►  Lessons  ──►  pseudoskills  ──►  Skills
(worked)   (dated       (loose,           (stabilized,
            takeaways)   evolving          formalized
                         how-tos)          Claude Skills)

Maturation is earned, not scheduled: a Lesson joins a pseudoskill only when it recurs and coheres; a pseudoskill formalizes only once it has stabilized — promote on evidence, never on a timer. pseudoskill and Skill aren't competing terms; they're the loose and stable ends of the same lineage. (This arc used to sit on the lifecycle page; the lifecycle is now just the per-goal loop, and this maturation is its own thing.)

Example

pseudoskills/deploy-lambda.md
# deploy-lambda (pseudoskill)
## How-to
1. Build the bundle, ...
## Version notes
- 2026-06-12 — first run; CORS preflight tripped us up.
- 2026-06-16 — Function URL needs both InvokeFunctionUrl + InvokeFunction.

pseudoskill vs Skill — loose and stable ends of one lineage. A pseudoskill is the loose, evolving form that lives inside .human/; a Skill is what it becomes once it stabilizes and gets formalized as a Claude Skill. The "pseudo" predates Claude Skills, which is why the loose stage keeps the older name even though the stable stage borrows Anthropic's. When you need to be exact: pseudoskill = loose/native/evolving, Skill = stable/formalized/packaged.

Pseudoskills are emergent — earned from accumulated Lessons — with one deliberate exception: dotHumanize, which ships ready-made to bootstrap the floor.

Related

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