Problem

openclaw 2026.4.23 (a979721) reports skills as eligible: true even when they declare required binaries (metadata.requires.bins) that aren't installed on the system. The skill validator only honors the metadata.openclaw.* namespace and silently ignores metadata.clawdbot.*, which is the legacy key still used by a large number of bundled and ClawHub-published skills.

In a fresh user workspace I found:

• 43 skills with metadata.clawdbot (legacy key, ignored by validator)
• 10 skills with metadata.openclaw (current key, honored)
• 24 of the legacy-key skills declare bins that weren't installed, yet openclaw skills check and openclaw skills list --json returned eligible: true with missing.bins: [] for all of them

End-user impact: agents are told a skill is ready, attempt to invoke it, and fail at runtime with command not found. The advertised install actions (also under metadata.clawdbot.install[]) are equally hidden from the install hints surfaced by Control UI / skills info.

Reproduction

# Fresh install, only the bundled openclaw skills present
which op            # → not found
openclaw skills info 1password
# Status: ✓ Ready  (← wrong; the SKILL.md declares requires.bins=["op"] under metadata.clawdbot)

Frontmatter of the bundled 1password skill:

---
name: 1password
description: Set up and use 1Password CLI (op). ...
homepage: https://developer.1password.com/docs/cli/get-started/
metadata: {"clawdbot":{"emoji":"🔐","requires":{"bins":["op"]},"install":[{"id":"brew","kind":"brew","formula":"1password-cli","bins":["op"],"label":"Install 1Password CLI (brew)"}]}}
---

The validator treats metadata.requires as empty because it only inspects metadata.openclaw.requires. Compare with sherpa-onnx-tts (uses metadata.openclaw) which is correctly flagged when its env vars are missing.

24 affected skills observed in the wild

Suggested fix (pick one or both)

1. Validator — make the skill validator read metadata.clawdbot.{requires,install} as a fallback when metadata.openclaw.* is absent. Low-risk, single source-of-truth change in the skill loader.
2. Skill migration — automated openclaw doctor --fix step (or a one-shot rewrite at upgrade time) that renames metadata.clawdbot → metadata.openclaw in workspace SKILL.md files. Keeps the validator strict on a single key going forward.

I'd lean (1) plus a deprecation warning, since SKILL.md authors / ClawHub publishers can't be forced to migrate.

Environment

• macOS 26.4.1 arm64, node 25.5.0
• openclaw 2026.4.23 (a979721) installed via npm (npm -g)
• 111 skills total in workspace (98 workspace + 12 bundled + 1 managed)

Happy to PR (1) — looks like a small change in the skill manifest reader.