Favorite skills: robot-persisted per-user curation of the Skills menu

[theo-michel]

What

Users star skills; the Skills menu shows favorites by default (or the whole roster until the first star), with the rest behind "Show all (N more)". Favorites live on the robot — not in any client — so the webapp and the mobile app share one list:

• /brain/favorite_skills — latched + heartbeated broadcast, String JSON {"skills": [ids]}
• /brain/set_favorite_skills — full-list replace from any client (star toggle publishes the whole updated list; the broadcast echo confirms)
• Persisted in workspace/.preferences/favorite_skills.json (gitignored), atomic writes, survives restarts and corrupt files

Also fixes row labels showing roster paths: innate-os/pick_socks now renders as "Pick Socks" (source prefixes are plumbing, not UI).

History / design

The first commit curated via a hardcoded list in webapp JS; that was the wrong layer — curation must be robot-side so all clients agree — and shipped defaults shouldn't override user judgment. This supersedes it with user-owned favorites. The principle stands: exposure is a consumer/user list, never author-side metadata on skills (RFC included: docs/SKILLS_AS_FUNCTIONS_RFC.md, draft for discussion, not implemented here).

Assumption: clients are unauthenticated, so "per user" = per robot (one favorites list per machine). If we later grow user identities, the store keys naturally by user file.

Mobile app: adopts the same two topics via rosbridge — no innate-os changes needed when it does.

UX details

• First star ever auto-flips to "Show all" so the list doesn't collapse to one row mid-browse
• Star sits beside the run button (never nested — a mis-tap must not launch the skill)
• Re-renders are membership-gated (latched heartbeats don't steal form focus)
• A favorite whose skill is mid-reload survives (store keeps unknown ids; the view just doesn't show them)

Testing

• pytest ros2_ws/src/brain/brain_client/test/test_favorite_skills.py — 7 tests (sanitize, persistence round-trip, corrupt-file recovery, legacy bare-array format); added to the CI fast bucket in ci/run_integration_tests.sh
• node webapp/tests/skillsMenu.test.js — 6 tests on the pure helpers (favorites filter, first-run behavior, path-hiding labels)
• Browser end-to-end against the real skillsMenu.js with a stubbed rosClient: first-run shows all with outline stars → first star keeps the list expanded and publishes {"skills":[...]} → "Show fewer" shows exactly the starred rows → a robot-side list change (as the mobile app would make) updates the view → unstarring all returns to first-run
• ruff + pre-commit (CI config) pass on all touched Python

[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

This PR adds a curated, robot-persisted favorites view to the cockpit Skills menu. The main changes are:

• A ROS publisher and subscriber for shared favorite skills.
• Atomic on-robot persistence for the favorites list.
• Favorite controls and a full-roster toggle in the cockpit menu.
• Unit tests, styles, CI coverage, and a skills-as-functions RFC.

Confidence Score: 5/5

This looks safe to merge.

• No blocking issues found in the changed code.

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
ros2_ws/src/brain/brain_client/brain_client/nodes/skills_server.py	Adds publication, replacement updates, persistence wiring, and heartbeat delivery for favorite skills.
ros2_ws/src/brain/brain_client/brain_client/skills/favorites.py	Adds sanitization and atomic file persistence for the ordered favorites list.
webapp/js/teleop/skillsMenu.js	Adds favorite-based menu curation, star controls, and a full-roster toggle.
webapp/tests/skillsMenu.test.js	Tests favorite filtering, roster ordering, and operator-facing labels.
ros2_ws/src/brain/brain_client/test/test_favorite_skills.py	Tests persistence, sanitization, corrupt input, unknown identifiers, and legacy data.

_{Reviews (2): Last reviewed commit: "feat(skills): robot-persisted favorite s..." | Re-trigger Greptile}

[theo-michel]

Superseded — the favorites work (and the skill_lib cleanup) moved into #542 per review, so the whole skills story lands as one PR. Branch left in place.