Plugin skills appear twice in system prompt skill list
Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Feb 28, 2026 by JeffPGray Closed Mar 4, 2026
Description
Every plugin skill/command is enumerated twice in the system-reminder skill list injected into the system prompt. This doubles the context window cost of having plugins enabled.
Steps to Reproduce
- Enable multiple plugins in
~/.claude/settings.json - Start a new Claude Code session
- Observe the
system-reminderthat lists available skills - Every plugin skill appears exactly twice in the list
Expected Behavior
Each plugin skill should appear once in the skill list.
Actual Behavior
The entire skill list is duplicated. For example:
- commit-commands:commit: Create a git commit
- feature-dev:feature-dev: Guided feature development...
- hookify:help: Get help with the hookify plugin
...
- commit-commands:commit: Create a git commit ← duplicate
- feature-dev:feature-dev: Guided feature development... ← duplicate
- hookify:help: Get help with the hookify plugin ← duplicate
...
Impact
With 37 unique plugin skills, this results in 74 skill entries in the system prompt instead of 37. This wastes context window space and reduces available context for actual code, files, and conversation history — especially in longer sessions.
Environment
- macOS (Apple Silicon)
- Claude Code (latest as of 2026-02-28)
- Plugins installed at user scope only (
"scope": "user") - No project-level plugin settings
What I've Verified
settings.json: each plugin listed onceinstalled_plugins.json: each plugin has a single entry with"scope": "user"- No project-level
settings.jsonfiles exist - No duplicate install paths in plugin cache
- The duplication appears to happen in the plugin loader's skill enumeration, not in user configuration
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