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