Feature Request: Support glob/wildcard patterns in subagent skills field

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Feb 26, 2026 by codeisme621 Closed Mar 26, 2026

Feature Request

Problem

The skills field in custom subagent frontmatter (.claude/agents/*.md) only accepts exact skill names. There is no way to use glob patterns or wildcards to match multiple skills dynamically.

This becomes painful when you have a growing collection of skills with a common prefix. For example, a project using Spec-Driven Development might have an expanding set of domain expert skills:

.claude/skills/
├── expert-remotion/
├── expert-springboot/
├── expert-dynamodb/
├── expert-react-email/
└── ... (growing over time)

Every time a new expert skill is added, you must manually update every subagent frontmatter file that needs access to experts:

skills:
  - expert-remotion
  - expert-springboot
  - expert-dynamodb
  - expert-react-email
  # Must add every new expert here manually

Proposed Solution

Support glob/wildcard patterns in the skills field:

---
name: spec-researcher
description: Researches codebase for spec planning
skills:
  - expert-*           # Load all expert skills
  - spec-planning      # Exact match still works
---

This would be consistent with how Claude Code already supports wildcard patterns in other contexts (e.g., Bash(git:*) in permissions).

Use Case

In a Spec-Driven Development workflow, domain expert skills are created incrementally as new technology areas are encountered. A spec-researcher subagent needs access to all available experts, but the set of experts grows over time. Without glob support, the subagent frontmatter must be manually updated every time a new expert is registered — a maintenance burden that defeats the purpose of a modular skill system.

Additional Context

  • The skills field currently only accepts exact string matches per the subagents documentation
  • Related to skill discoverability — if a subagent can't dynamically discover skills, it can't benefit from newly added skills without manual intervention
  • A simpler alternative: support a * (all skills) option in addition to exact names

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