What happened?

list_skills / get_skill return the literal YAML block-scalar indicator (| or >) as a skill's description when the skill's SKILL.md frontmatter uses a block scalar:

---
name: browse
description: |
  Fast headless browser for QA testing and site dogfooding. Navigate any URL...
---

→ catalog entry comes back as "description": "|". Affects every skill authored with description: | or description: >. Single-line description: ... skills are fine. triggers/tools parse correctly, and get_skill still returns the full prose body — so it's a catalog-display issue, not data loss.

What did you expect?

The folded block-scalar content as the one-line description (or, minimally, the body's first prose line via the existing firstProseLine fallback).

Steps to reproduce

1. Author a skill whose SKILL.md frontmatter uses description: | (block scalar) with the text on the indented lines below.
2. Enable mcp.publish_skills and point GBRAIN_SKILLS_DIR at the skills dir.
3. Call list_skills over MCP → that skill's description is "|" (or ">").

Environment

• gbrain version: 0.42.1.0
• OS: macOS 26.5 (Darwin 25.5.0)
• Bun version: 1.3.13
• Database: self-hosted (PGLite)

gbrain doctor --json output

N/A — this is a static-analysis bug in src/core/skill-catalog.ts (frontmatter
description parsing), independent of brain health/connection. doctor reports the
brain connected and healthy; no doctor check covers the list_skills catalog.

Root cause

src/core/skill-catalog.ts:

function parseDescriptionField(raw) {
  const m = raw.match(/^description:\s*["']?(.+?)["']?\s*$/m);
  if (!m) return undefined;
  const v = m[1].trim();
  return v.length > 0 ? v : undefined;   // returns "|" for `description: |`
}

export function oneLineDescription(raw, body) {
  return parseDescriptionField(raw) ?? firstProseLine(body);
}

For description: |, the regex captures | (length 1 > 0), so parseDescriptionField returns "|" and the ?? firstProseLine(body) fallback never fires. Same for > and chomping/indent variants (|-, >2, etc.).

Suggested fix

In parseDescriptionField, when the captured value is a bare block-scalar indicator (|/>, optionally followed by +/-/digits), either:

• (minimal) return undefined so oneLineDescription falls through to firstProseLine(body), or
• (complete) read the indented continuation lines and fold them into a one-liner.

Happy to send a PR with a test/ case if useful.