OCTAVE Literacy

VerifiedSafe

Fundamental reading and writing capability for the OCTAVE format. Provides agents with basic structural competence without full architectural specification overhead.

Sby Skills Guide Bot
Data & AIIntermediate
3/8/2026
Claude CodeCursorWindsurfCopilotCodex
#octave#structured-output#serialization#syntax#llm-format

Recommended for

Automated summary

This skill gives an agent basic grammar for the OCTAVE format — assignments, blocks, lists, operators and assembly rules — so it can read and emit the format on its own.

Strengths

  • Covers the essentials in few tokens: core syntax, operators with precedence, and ASCII aliases
  • Explicit critical rules (no spaces around ::, 2-space indentation, valid keys, lowercase booleans) that prevent the most common mistakes
  • States profile assembly rules (a single final ===END===) so multi-part documents compose correctly
  • Ships with a complete example block and ready-to-apply rule list

Limitations

  • Deliberately scoped to basic structural competence; the full architectural specification lives in an external reference
  • No validation or parsing tooling is included (allowed-tools is Read only), so correctness depends on the agent
  • Unicode operators may be mangled in some environments; the ASCII aliases are the fallback
When to use it

Inject it when an agent needs to write or interpret simple OCTAVE text without loading the full specification.

When not to use it

Skip it when the task needs advanced OCTAVE semantics, full holographic schema mode, or automated syntax validation.

Security analysis

Safe
Quality score84/100

The skill is a pure documentation/syntax reference for a custom text format. It contains no shell commands, network calls, file writes, secret handling, base64 payloads, or instructions to disable safety. The only tool reference is a read-only Read permission, and all content is descriptive grammar. No meaningful execution risk.

Findings
  • •Frontmatter declares allowed-tools: Read (read-only, benign) although the audit header states none declared — minor metadata inconsistency, not a risk
  • •References an external spec file (octave-5-llm-core.oct.md) that is not included; no executable payload present
How this analysis is made

Examples

Write an OCTAVE block
Write an OCTAVE block describing our deployment pipeline with STATUS, PHASES (PLAN and BUILD) and METRICS (SPEED, QUALITY) keys.
Convert JSON to OCTAVE
Convert this JSON config into valid OCTAVE syntax: use :: for assignments, 2-space indentation for nested blocks, and brackets for lists.
Merge OCTAVE profiles
Merge these two OCTAVE profile sections into one document, omitting the intermediate ===END=== so only the final one terminates the file.

name: octave-literacy description: Fundamental reading and writing capability for the OCTAVE format. Inject this to give an agent basic structural competence without the overhead of full architectural specifications. Triggers on: octave format, write octave, octave syntax, structured output. allowed-tools: Read implements: specs/octave-5-llm-core

OCTAVE Literacy Skill

===OCTAVE_LITERACY=== META: TYPE::SKILL VERSION::"1.1" PURPOSE::"Essential syntax and operators for basic OCTAVE competence" TIER::LOSSLESS SPEC_REFERENCE::octave-5-llm-core.oct.md

§1::CORE_SYNTAX ASSIGNMENT::KEY::value // Double colon is MANDATORY for data BLOCK::KEY:[indent_2] // Single colon + newline + 2 spaces starts a block LIST::[a,b,c] // Brackets for collections STRING::"value"∨bare_word // Quotes required if contains spaces or special chars NUMBER::42∨3.14∨-1e10 // No quotes for numeric values BOOLEAN::true∨false // Lowercase only NULL::null // Lowercase only COMMENT::// // Standard comment syntax

§1b::BRACKET_FORMS CONTAINER::[a,b,c] // Bare brackets = list CONSTRUCTOR::NAME[args] // NAME[...] = constructor (REGEX[pattern], ENUM[a,b]) INLINE_MAP::[key::val,key2::val2] // Dense key-value pairs (values must be atoms) HOLOGRAPHIC::["value"∧CONSTRAINT→§TARGET] // Schema mode only

§2::OPERATORS // EXPRESSION OPERATORS (with precedence - lower number = tighter binding) []::Container [a,b,c] (precedence 1) ⧺::Concatenation A⧺B (mechanical join) (precedence 2) | ASCII: ~ ⊕::Synthesis A⊕B (emergent whole) (precedence 3) | ASCII: + ⇌::Tension A⇌B (binary opposition) (precedence 4) | ASCII: vs [requires word boundaries] ∧::Constraint [A∧B∧C] (precedence 5) | ASCII: & ∨::Alternative A∨B (precedence 6) | ASCII: | →::Flow A→B→C (precedence 7, right-associative) | ASCII: ->

// PREFIX/SPECIAL §::Target (→§DECISION_LOG) //::Comment (line start or after value)

§2b::ASCII_ALIASES ALL_OPERATORS::accept_both_unicode_and_ascii CANONICAL_OUTPUT::prefer_unicode_in_emission vs_BOUNDARY_RULE::"vs requires word boundaries [whitespace∨bracket∨paren∨start∨end]" VALID::"A vs B"∨"[Speed vs Quality]" INVALID::"SpeedvsQuality"[no_boundaries]

§3::CRITICAL_RULES 1::No spaces around assignment :: (KEY::value, not KEY :: value) 2::Indent exactly 2 spaces per level (NO TABS) 3::All keys must be [A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _] and start with letter or underscore 4::Envelopes are ===NAME=== at start and ===END=== at finish 5::Use lowercase for true, false, null (NOT True, False, NULL) 6::∧ only appears inside brackets, never bare: [A∧B∧C] is valid, A∧B is not 7::⇌ is binary only (A⇌B), not chained (A⇌B⇌C is invalid)

§3b::ASSEMBLY_RULES WHEN_CONCATENATING_PROFILES::omit_intermediate_===END===[only_final_===END===terminates] USE_CASES::[agent_context_injection,specification_layering,multi_part_documents] EXAMPLE::core_profile⊕schema_profile→single===END===_at_finish

§4::EXAMPLE_BLOCK ===EXAMPLE=== STATUS::ACTIVE PHASES: PLAN::[Research → Design] BUILD::[Code ⊕ Test] METRICS: SPEED::"High" QUALITY::"Verified" ===END===

===END===

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