Global Skills Not Discoverable in New Sessions

Global Skills Not Discoverable in New Sessions

Problem

Global skills stored in ~/.claude/skills/ are not automatically discoverable by Claude Code in new sessions, making them effectively useless without manual user intervention each session.

Current Behavior

1. Global skills are stored in ~/.claude/skills/
2. The <available_skills> section in Claude's system prompt only shows project-local skills (from .claude/skills/ in the project directory)
3. Claude has no memory between sessions
4. Therefore, each new session, Claude is unaware that global skills exist

Expected Behavior

Global skills should be automatically discoverable and usable without requiring the user to:

• Remember to mention them every session
• Manually tell Claude to check ~/.claude/skills/
• Invoke them by name without Claude knowing they exist

Impact

• Users cannot benefit from proactive skill suggestions
• Claude cannot recommend using relevant global skills for tasks
• Defeats the purpose of "global" skills that should work across all projects
• Poor user experience requiring repetitive manual intervention

Suggested Solutions

1. Auto-include global skills: Automatically populate <available_skills> with both project-local AND global skills at session start
2. System prompt instruction: Add instruction for Claude to check ~/.claude/skills/ at session start
3. Persistent skill registry: Maintain a registry of available skills that persists across sessions

Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.0.64
• Platform: macOS (Darwin 24.6.0)

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a global skill in ~/.claude/skills/my-skill/SKILL.md
2. Start a new Claude Code session
3. Ask Claude "what skills are available?"
4. Observe: Claude only reports project-local skills, unaware of global skills

Related

This architectural limitation significantly reduces the value of the global skills feature introduced in recent Claude Code versions.