CherryHQ/cherry-studio · error · ValueError

SKILL.md missing frontmatter (no opening ---)

Error message

SKILL.md missing frontmatter (no opening ---)

What it means

Error "SKILL.md missing frontmatter (no opening ---)" thrown in CherryHQ/cherry-studio.

Source

Thrown at resources/skills/skill-creator/scripts/utils.py:13

"""Shared utilities for skill-creator scripts."""

from pathlib import Path



def parse_skill_md(skill_path: Path) -> tuple[str, str, str]:
    """Parse a SKILL.md file, returning (name, description, full_content)."""
    content = (skill_path / "SKILL.md").read_text()
    lines = content.split("\n")

    if lines[0].strip() != "---":
        raise ValueError("SKILL.md missing frontmatter (no opening ---)")

    end_idx = None
    for i, line in enumerate(lines[1:], start=1):
        if line.strip() == "---":
            end_idx = i
            break

    if end_idx is None:
        raise ValueError("SKILL.md missing frontmatter (no closing ---)")

    name = ""
    description = ""
    frontmatter_lines = lines[1:end_idx]
    i = 0
    while i < len(frontmatter_lines):
        line = frontmatter_lines[i]
        if line.startswith("name:"):
            name = line[len("name:"):].strip().strip('"').strip("'")

View on GitHub (pinned to 726446b54c)

Solutions

  1. Add a YAML frontmatter block starting with --- on the first line of SKILL.md.
  2. Use the skill template which includes the required frontmatter with name and description fields.

Example fix

Start SKILL.md with:
---
name: my-skill
description: ...
---

When it happens

Trigger: parse_skill_md reads a SKILL.md whose first line is not the opening '---' frontmatter delimiter.

Common situations: Raised when a skill directory's SKILL.md lacks YAML frontmatter entirely — e.g. a hand-written file that starts directly with content, or the wrong file path was passed. Fix by adding the leading '---' frontmatter block with name/description.


AI-assisted analysis of CherryHQ/cherry-studio@726446b54c (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/60c6be78fcf093d9. Report an issue: GitHub.