Custom Skills not being loaded up at startup

[azharfarhann]

Hi, I’m trying to use custom workspace skills but they are not being recognized by the agent.

Setup:

Running nanobot v0.1.5.post1 in Docker
Workspace path: ~/.nanobot/workspace (mounted correctly)
Skill placed at:
~/.nanobot/workspace/skills/secret-code/SKILL.md

Workspace path is correct and mounted to /root/.nanobot/workspace
Skill exists at:
/root/.nanobot/workspace/skills/secret-code/SKILL.md
Permissions are readable (-rw-r--r--)
SKILL.md format is valid YAML
Docker run command:

docker run -it
-p 18790:18790
-v $HOME/nanobot-data:/root/.nanobot
--name nanobot
nanobot nanobot gateway --verbose

Verbose startup logs:

🐈 Starting nanobot gateway version 0.1.5.post1 on port 18790...
DEBUG:asyncio:Using selector: EpollSelector
2026-04-23 10:21:14.536 | DEBUG | nanobot.channels.registry:discover_all:64 - Skipping built-in channel 'matrix': Matrix dependencies not installed. Run: pip install nanobot-ai[matrix]
2026-04-23 10:21:15.039 | INFO | nanobot.channels.manager:_init_channels:61 - WebSocket channel enabled
✓ Channels enabled: websocket
DEBUG:filelock:Attempting to acquire lock 131482566342416 on /root/.nanobot/workspace/cron.lock
DEBUG:filelock:Lock 131482566342416 acquired on /root/.nanobot/workspace/cron.lock
DEBUG:filelock:Attempting to release lock 131482566342416 on /root/.nanobot/workspace/cron.lock
DEBUG:filelock:Lock 131482566342416 released on /root/.nanobot/workspace/cron.lock
✓ Cron: 1 scheduled jobs
✓ Heartbeat: every 1800s
2026-04-23 10:21:15.045 | INFO | nanobot.cron.service:register_system_job:426 - Cron: registered system job 'dream' (dream)
✓ Dream: every 2h
2026-04-23 10:21:15.047 | INFO | nanobot.cron.service:start:246 - Cron service started with 1 jobs
2026-04-23 10:21:15.047 | INFO | nanobot.heartbeat.service:start:124 - Heartbeat started (every 1800s)
2026-04-23 10:21:15.047 | INFO | nanobot.agent.loop:run:435 - Agent loop started
2026-04-23 10:21:15.048 | INFO | nanobot.channels.manager:start_all:111 - Starting websocket channel...
2026-04-23 10:21:15.048 | INFO | nanobot.channels.manager:_dispatch_outbound:158 - Outbound dispatcher started
2026-04-23 10:21:15.048 | INFO | nanobot.channels.websocket:start:311 - WebSocket server listening on ws://127.0.0.1:8765/
✓ Health endpoint: http://127.0.0.1:18790/health

What I’m observing:

There is no log indicating workspace skills are being scanned or loaded at startup
When I ask “What skills do you have?”, only built-in skills appear
The agent does not seem aware of my custom skill at all
If I explicitly tell it to read the SKILL.md file via absolute path, it works
From the docs, it seems workspace skills should be auto-discovered and available to the agent on startup, but that’s not happening here.

Is this expected behavior in CLI/gateway mode, or could something be missing or not triggered in this setup?

Happy to try any additional checks if needed.