[FEATURE] Recursive skill discovery in ~/.claude/skills/ for skill collections

Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened Jan 25, 2026 by RonanCodes Closed Feb 28, 2026

Preflight Checklist

  • [x] I have searched existing requests and found related issues (#10238, #16438, #18192) but want to add a specific use case
  • [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

When maintaining a collection of related skills (e.g., a GitHub repo of skills like roco-skills), the current flat structure in ~/.claude/skills/ makes it difficult to:

  1. Clone and use skill collections — Can't just git clone a skill repo into the skills folder
  2. Keep skills updated — Can't just git pull to update all skills at once
  3. Organize by author/project — Everything is flat, leading to naming prefix pollution

Current Workaround

For each skill in a collection, you must create individual symlinks:

# Clone the skill collection
git clone https://github.com/user/my-skills ~/my-skills

# Manually symlink each skill (must repeat for every new skill)
ln -s ~/my-skills/skill-one ~/.claude/skills/skill-one
ln -s ~/my-skills/skill-two ~/.claude/skills/skill-two
# ... repeat for each skill

Or use a sync script that re-symlinks everything:

#!/bin/bash
for skill in ~/my-skills/*/; do
  ln -sf "$skill" ~/.claude/skills/
done

This is tedious and error-prone. When new skills are added to the collection, users must remember to re-run the script.

Proposed Solution

Recursively scan ~/.claude/skills/ for directories containing SKILL.md files, regardless of nesting depth.

~/.claude/skills/
├── my-skills/              # ← git clone of skill collection
│   ├── skill-one/
│   │   └── SKILL.md        # ✅ Found
│   ├── skill-two/
│   │   └── SKILL.md        # ✅ Found
│   └── README.md
└── standalone-skill/
    └── SKILL.md            # ✅ Found (existing behavior)

This would allow:

  • git clone <repo> ~/.claude/skills/<name> → all skills immediately available
  • git pull → all skills updated
  • Clean organization by collection/author

Prior Art

Clawdbot uses the same Agent Skills spec but with recursive discovery via pi-coding-agent. This already works there, so the pattern is proven.

Priority

Medium - Would significantly improve skill collection workflows

Feature Category

Skills system

Additional Context

Related issues: #10238, #16438, #18192 — all requesting similar functionality. This issue focuses specifically on the skill collection use case with git repos.

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