Four flows.

Update an existing install

Already running opchain in a project? Replace the skills in place. Your .checkpoints/ directory lives outside .claude/skills/, so every skill's session state — phase, step, next actions, decisions — is preserved across the swap. The new skills pick up the existing checkpoints on their next invocation.

Claude Code CLI

Run from your project root. This wipes the old skills directory and replaces it with the latest bundle.

# .checkpoints/ is a sibling of .claude/ — never touched by this swap
rm -rf .claude/skills/
curl -L https://opchain.dev/opchain-skills.zip -o opchain-skills.zip
unzip opchain-skills.zip -d .claude/skills/
rm opchain-skills.zip

Verify the new version is live. Check what the site is currently shipping with curl https://opchain.dev/api/health (the version field is the build SHA), then start a new Claude Code session and run /oc-ops — the orchestrator should report your existing checkpoints exactly where you left them.

Claude.ai / Claude Desktop

1. Download the latest bundle ZIP or the individual SKILL.md files you use from the Skill Library.
2. Open Claude → Settings → Customize → Skills.
3. For each skill you've installed, click the existing entry and choose Replace (or delete and re-upload). Skills are matched by name, so the new file overrides the old one.
4. Checkpoints in Claude.ai live in the project, not the skill, so they survive the upload.

Team (git-tracked install)

If you committed .claude/skills/ with the team flow, do the upgrade on a branch so the skill diff lands in review:

git checkout -b chore/upgrade-opchain
rm -rf .claude/skills/
curl -L https://opchain.dev/opchain-skills.zip -o opchain-skills.zip
unzip opchain-skills.zip -d .claude/skills/
rm opchain-skills.zip
git add .claude/skills/
git commit -m "chore: upgrade opchain skills"

Reviewers see exactly which skills changed, and .checkpoints/ is untouched because it's a separate top-level directory.

Check which version you're on

curl -sS https://opchain.dev/api/health | jq .version

Returns the build SHA currently published at opchain.dev. Re-run after upgrading and confirm a fresh Claude session sees the new skills under .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md.

Get notified automatically

Skills don't phone home, so a stale install stays stale silently. This Claude Code hook checks at session start: it reads the version from your installed skills' frontmatter, compares it against the live catalog's catalogVersion at opchain.dev/skills.json, and drops a one-line notice into the session when a newer release is out. Merge it into ~/.claude/settings.json (or a project's .claude/settings.json) — if you already have a hooks block, add the SessionStart entry to it rather than pasting the whole object.

{
  "hooks": {
    "SessionStart": [
      {
        "matcher": "startup",
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "command",
            "command": "f=$(ls \"${CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR:-.}\"/.claude/skills/oc-*/SKILL.md \"$HOME\"/.claude/skills/oc-*/SKILL.md 2>/dev/null | head -n1); [ -n \"$f\" ] || exit 0; installed=$(sed -n 's/^version:[[:space:]]*//p' \"$f\" | head -n1); [ -n \"$installed\" ] || exit 0; latest=$(curl -sf --max-time 3 \"https://opchain.dev/skills.json?u=$(date +%s)\" | sed -n 's/.*\"catalogVersion\": *\"\\([^\"]*\\)\".*/\\1/p' | head -n1); [ -n \"$latest\" ] && [ \"$installed\" != \"$latest\" ] && echo \"opchain skills v$latest is available (installed: v$installed). Update guide: https://opchain.dev/install#update\"; exit 0"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

It checks, it never installs — releases can carry breaking changes (see the changelog), so the swap stays a deliberate step: run the upgrade command above when you see the notice. When you're current, offline, or opchain isn't installed, the hook prints nothing and gets out of the way. It fires only on startup — not on resume or compact — and gives the network three seconds before giving up.