[BUG] Skill tool description example teaches model to pass short names, causing "Unknown skill" errors

BLUF: The Skill tool's own description examples use short names (skill: "commit") but the plugin system registers skills with fully-qualified names (commit-commands:commit). The model follows the example, passes the short name, and gets "Unknown skill" errors. Fix the examples or add short-name resolution.

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Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

When a user types /commit, the model passes skill: "commit" to the Skill tool instead of the fully-qualified skill: "commit-commands:commit". This fails with:

Error: Unknown skill: commit

Root cause: The Skill tool's own description includes this example:

skill: "commit", args: "-m 'Fix bug'" — invoke with arguments

This teaches the model to pass the short name commit instead of the fully-qualified commit-commands:commit. The model has the full skills list in its system prompt — it could resolve the correct name — but the example actively reinforces the wrong pattern.

What Should Happen?

The Skill tool description examples should use fully-qualified names that match how plugin skills are actually registered:

skill: "commit-commands:commit", args: "-m 'Fix bug'" — invoke with arguments

Or at minimum, the examples should not contradict the namespacing scheme.

Error Messages/Logs

⏺ Skill(commit)
  ⎿  Initializing…
  ⎿  Error: Unknown skill: commit

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install the commit-commands plugin from the official marketplace (or any plugin with namespaced commands)
2. Type /commit
3. Model invokes Skill(commit) instead of Skill(commit-commands:commit)
4. Error: "Unknown skill: commit"

Why This Isn't a Duplicate

• #18490 proposed fuzzy matching in the Skill tool (option 1 — workaround). This issue identifies the root cause: the tool description example is misleading the model.
• #16072 covers system prompt conflation of skills/commands. This issue is specifically about the Skill tool description teaching the model wrong invocation patterns.

Fix the example, fix the root cause. The model already has the full skills list — it just needs the tool description to not contradict the namespacing scheme.

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

Latest

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

The available skills list in the system prompt correctly shows commit-commands:commit as the skill name. The Skill tool description's example of skill: "commit" overrides this by teaching the model to use short names.