Personal-scope skills (~/.claude/skills/) not surfaced in model context for proactive discovery

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Mar 11, 2026 by brandoncollins7 Closed Mar 15, 2026

Bug Description

Personal-scope skills placed in ~/.claude/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md are invocable by the Skill tool when called by name, but are never listed in system-reminder messages or otherwise surfaced in the model's context. This means the model has no way to discover they exist and cannot proactively invoke them.

Expected Behavior

Per the Skill tool description: "Available skills are listed in system-reminder messages in the conversation." Personal-scope skills should be included in these system-reminder listings alongside plugin/marketplace skills, so the model can check for relevant skills before taking action.

Actual Behavior

  • Personal skill at ~/.claude/skills/nova-railway/SKILL.md exists and works when invoked by name (Skill tool with skill: "nova-railway")
  • However, the skill is never listed in any system-reminder message
  • The model only becomes aware of superpowers marketplace skills (loaded via plugin hooks) and has no visibility into personal-scope skills
  • User had to manually point the model to the skill's file path before it could be invoked

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Create a personal skill: mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/my-skill && echo "# My Skill" > ~/.claude/skills/my-skill/SKILL.md
  2. Start a new Claude Code conversation
  3. Ask Claude to perform a task that the skill covers
  4. Observe that Claude does not invoke or mention the skill
  5. Manually invoke /my-skill — it works fine, confirming discovery works for invocation but not for model awareness

Environment

  • Claude Code CLI
  • macOS (Darwin 25.3.0)
  • Skills in ~/.claude/skills/ directory (personal scope)

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