diff --git a/.agents/skills/translation-cache-shell/SKILL.md b/.agents/skills/translation-cache-shell/SKILL.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..63dc62f391
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.agents/skills/translation-cache-shell/SKILL.md
@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+---
+name: translation-cache-shell
+description: Inspect and prune a gt4py.next cache with shell tools only — find, grep, rm. TRIGGER when clearing or examining a `.gt4py_cache` on a machine where gt4py cannot be imported (a compute node, a container, a cache copied from elsewhere), or when a benchmark must be cleared of cached translations before it runs. SKIP for `gt4py.cartesian` caches, which are a separate mechanism with a different layout.
+---
+
+# translation-cache-shell
+
+gt4py.next caches the *translation* step — the optimized SDFG for dace, the
+generated source for gtfn — as one pickle per translated program, keyed by the
+program and `gt4py.__version__` rather than by the gt4py sources. Editing a
+transformation or an optimization pass leaves that key intact, so the next run
+replays the cached translation while the build step still recompiles from it.
+Clearing only the build folder is not enough, and a fresh library mtime is
+evidence of recompilation, never of re-translation.
+
+These recipes need nothing but a shell. They take no lock — see the last section.
+
+## Where the cache is
+
+`.gt4py_cache`, next to the working directory of the run, or under
+`GT4PY_BUILD_CACHE_DIR` if that is set. It is only written there when
+`GT4PY_BUILD_CACHE_LIFETIME=persistent`; otherwise it lives in a temporary
+directory that is deleted when the process exits. See
+[`config.py`](../../../src/gt4py/next/config.py) for the defaults.
+
+Pass absolute paths to the commands below. `grep -r` echoes paths exactly as
+they were given, so a relative operand yields relative output, which a later
+`cd` — or a pipeline run from elsewhere — silently redirects.
+
+Every cached translation is a `*.pkl`, and only translations are — build folders
+contain none. So `--include='*.pkl'` scopes to entries alone, whatever directory
+layout the gt4py version uses:
+
+```bash
+find <cache> -name '*.pkl' | wc -l                          # how many entries
+find <cache> -name '*.pkl' -printf '%TF %10s %p\n' | sort   # by date, with sizes
+```
+
+## Which entries belong to a program
+
+The program name is stored as a plain string inside each entry:
+
+```bash
+grep -rlaF '<program>' <cache> --include='*.pkl'
+```
+
+Both flags matter:
+
+- **`-a`** — the entries are binary. Without it `ugrep`, a common drop-in `grep`,
+  skips them and prints nothing at all.
+- **`-F`** — fixed string, nothing cleverer (see below).
+
+This **over-matches**: a name that contains another name returns both.
+
+### Do not make it word-boundary-aware
+
+`grep -rlaP '(?<!\w)<program>(?!\w)'` looks like the fix for the over-matching
+and is silently wrong. Pickle stores a short string as
+`0x8c <length-byte> <bytes>`, so the byte before the name **is its length**. When
+the name is 48–57, 65–90 or 97–122 characters long that length byte is itself
+alphanumeric, the lookbehind rejects the match, and grep reports **nothing** for
+that program. Measured on a real 224-entry cache: 3 of 22 programs silently
+returned zero hits, the three whose names are 48, 48 and 49 characters. A POSIX
+`[^A-Za-z0-9_]` variant returned zero for all 22.
+
+Nothing found reads as nothing cached, which is exactly the wrong way to be
+wrong here.
+
+## Clear them
+
+```bash
+grep -rlaF '<program>' <cache> --include='*.pkl'                    # look first
+grep -rlaF --null '<program>' <cache> --include='*.pkl' | xargs -0 -r rm -v
+```
+
+`--null` and `-0` because a cache path containing a space otherwise splits and
+`rm` deletes nothing while reporting three failures; `-r` because an empty match
+set otherwise runs `rm` with no arguments. Both `ugrep` and GNU grep accept
+`--null` (do **not** reach for `-Z`: in `ugrep` that means fuzzy matching).
+
+To clear everything, delete the cache folder.
+
+## Name a single entry
+
+Best effort, for reading a cache you did not write:
+
+```bash
+head -c 2000 <entry>.pkl | strings -n 4 | grep -A1 -m1 '^SymbolName$' | tail -1 |
+  sed 's/^[^A-Za-z_]//'
+```
+
+Exact on all 331 entries of two real caches, whose names run 14–58 characters.
+The leading `sed` strips the length byte, which `strings` shows only when it is
+printable; a name of 65 characters or more would leave a spurious leading letter.
+Treat the output as a label, not as an identity.
+
+## What this cannot do
+
+The runtime holds a lock around each cache file while writing it
+(`gt4py._core.locking`). These recipes do not, so an `rm` here can race a
+concurrent writer. On a shared filesystem with MPI ranks compiling, clear the
+cache between jobs rather than during one.
+
+When the cache is out of reach entirely, invalidate it without touching it by
+salting the key:
+
+```bash
+export GT4PY_BUILD_CACHE_VERSION_ID=$(git -C <gt4py checkout> rev-parse HEAD)
+```
+
+That invalidates the build folders too, and needs no filesystem access at all.
+Use a nonce instead of the commit hash when iterating on uncommitted changes.