Discover Skills

Discover Skills

Help users explore and understand available Claude Code skills.

Instructions

When invoked, search for and present all available skills in an organized manner.

Steps

1. List Loaded Skills

   Skills from ~/.claude/skills/, .claude/skills/, and other agent skill directories are already loaded - check the Skill tool's "Available skills" list first.

2. Search for Additional Skills

   Use Glob tool to find uninstalled skills in the current project:

   # Any skill folder (covers skills/<name>/ and plugins/<name>/skills/<name>/ layouts)
   Glob: pattern="**/skills/*/SKILL.md"
   
   # Single-skill repos with SKILL.md at root
   Glob: pattern="SKILL.md"
   

3. Search from Github via preset awesome list and Search using keyword

   Dicovery skills via networking github colleciton repo, request to view readme for discovery more.

4. Parse Skill Metadata

   Extract from each SKILL.md frontmatter:

   • name: Skill identifier
   • description: What the skill does

5. Present Results

   ## Available Skills
   
   | Skill | Description |
   |-------|-------------|
   | /skill-name | Brief description |
   
   ---
   
   **Tips:**
   - Use `/skill-name` to invoke a skill directly
   - Create custom skills in `.claude/skills/your-skill/SKILL.md`
   - Project skills (`.claude/skills/`) override global ones (`~/.claude/skills/`)
   

Skill Locations

Handling No Skills Found

If no skills are discovered:

1. Inform the user that no custom skills were found
2. Mention built-in skills from Claude Code (commit, code-review, etc.)
3. Provide guidance on creating custom skills
4. Recommend exploring skill collections (see below)

Popular Skill Collections

⚠️ Security Notice: Always review third-party skills before installing. Skills contain instructions that Claude will follow - treat them like executable code.

Official

Community Curated (Awesome Lists)

Note: Awesome lists are curated indexes with links to actual skill repos. Always fetch and read the README first:

gh repo view owner/repo

Community Featured Skills

High-quality skills from recognized organizations and developers:

Tip: These repos contain actual SKILL.md files. View and install directly:

gh repo view vercel-labs/agent-skills
gh api repos/vercel-labs/agent-skills/git/trees/main?recursive=1 --jq '.tree[] | select(.path | endswith("SKILL.md")) | .path'

Explore Skills on GitHub

Use gh CLI to discover skill repositories dynamically.

Search for Skill Repositories

# Search for SKILL.md files (most accurate)
gh search repos "SKILL.md in:path" --limit 30 --json fullName,description,stargazersCount,defaultBranch,createdAt,updatedAt

# Search agent-skills repos
gh search repos "skills" --limit 30 --match readme --json fullName,description,stargazersCount,defaultBranch,createdAt,updatedAt

Get Repository Details

# Get README content for skill overview
gh repo view owner/repo

# Download specific SKILL.md file
gh repo view owner/repo --raw path/to/SKILL.md > skill.md

Explore Skill Contents

# List skills directory structure
gh api repos/owner/repo/contents/skills --jq '.[].name'

# Get specific SKILL.md content (use --decode on macOS, -d on Linux)
gh api repos/owner/repo/contents/skills/skill-name/SKILL.md --jq '.content' | base64 --decode

# List all SKILL.md files in repo
gh api repos/owner/repo/git/trees/main?recursive=1 --jq '.tree[] | select(.path | endswith("SKILL.md")) | .path'

Quick Install from GitHub

# Install via the skills CLI (recommended - works across agents)
npx skills add owner/repo

# Or download a single skill manually
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/skill-name
gh repo view owner/repo --raw skills/skill-name/SKILL.md > ~/.claude/skills/skill-name/SKILL.md

Creating Custom Skills

Follow the template:

---
name: my-skill
description: Clear description of when to trigger this skill
---

# My Skill

## Instructions
[What Claude should do when this skill activates]

## Examples
[Usage examples]

Resources:

• What are skills?
• Creating custom skills