openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix `canvas` skill SKILL.md has no YAML frontmatter — skill is unreachable by description-based resolution [1 pull requests]

Summary

The shipped canvas AgentSkill is missing its YAML frontmatter block. SKILL.md starts directly with a markdown # Canvas Skill heading instead of ---\nname: canvas\ndescription: ...\n---. This makes the skill structurally invalid: the resolver has no name and no description to match user intent against, so the skill cannot be triggered by natural-language requests like "display this on the canvas" or "show this HTML on my node."

The body of the SKILL.md is informative and well-written — this is purely a frontmatter omission.

Reproduction

1. Install OpenClaw via npm: npm i -g openclaw
2. Inspect the bundled canvas skill:

   head -3 "$(npm root -g)/openclaw/skills/canvas/SKILL.md"

3. Observe the file begins with # Canvas Skill, not ---.

Expected first lines:

---
name: canvas
description: <what it does> Use when <triggers>...
---

Actual first lines:

# Canvas Skill

Display HTML content on connected OpenClaw nodes (Mac app, iOS, Android).

Impact

• The skill is invisible to the resolver. Users asking the agent to display HTML / dashboards / games on a connected node won't get the canvas skill matched even though the capability exists.
• The skill can still be invoked by direct path read, but that requires the user (or the agent) to already know the skill exists — defeating progressive disclosure.
• This is the classic "dark skill" failure mode: capability shipped, capability unreachable.

Suggested fix

Add a frontmatter block at the top of skills/canvas/SKILL.md. Proposed content (preserves the existing body):

---
name: canvas
description: Display HTML content (games, visualizations, dashboards, generated pages, interactive demos) on connected OpenClaw nodes (Mac app, iOS, Android) via a Tailscale-backed canvas host. Use when the user asks to show, render, present, or push HTML/web content to a node's canvas view, or wants to surface generated visualizations on a paired device.
---

How this was discovered

Running a workspace-side skill audit script that walks all SKILL.md files under ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/, ~/.nvm/.../openclaw/skills/, and ~/.openclaw/plugin-skills/. The audit flagged two errors on canvas:

ERROR [discoverability] canvas: frontmatter missing `name`
ERROR [discoverability] canvas: frontmatter missing `description`

It was the only skill across 54 audited that lacked frontmatter entirely.

Related suggestion

A small CI check in this repo that validates frontmatter presence (name + description) on every shipped SKILL.md would prevent regression. Roughly 30 lines of Node.

Environment

• OpenClaw: latest from npm as of 2026-05-17
• Node: v24.13.0
• OS: macOS 25.4.0 (arm64)