Plugin skills lack namespace prefix — commands/ and skills/ have different namespacing behavior

Summary

Plugin skills registered via skills/ directory don't get the {plugin-name}: prefix in slash command autocomplete, while commands/ directory entries do. This forces plugin authors to choose between auto-invocation (skills only) and proper namespacing (commands only).

Current Behavior

commands/ directory (e.g., commands/design.md in a plugin named vscxml):

• Slash command: /vscxml:design ✅ properly namespaced
• Auto-invocation by Claude: ❌ not supported

skills/ directory (e.g., skills/design/SKILL.md in a plugin named vscxml):

• Slash command: /design ❌ bare name, no namespace prefix
• Auto-invocation by Claude: ✅ works based on description matching

Expected Behavior

Both commands/ and skills/ should produce namespaced slash commands: /vscxml:design, /vscxml:generate, etc. — matching the plugin name prefix.

Skills should get {plugin-name}:{skill-name} format just like commands get {plugin-name}:{command-name}.

Impact

This creates a real problem for plugin authors:

• Name collisions: Two plugins with a generate skill will clash
• Forced tradeoff: You can have auto-invocation OR namespacing, not both
• Community workaround: Prefix skill directory names manually (e.g., skills/vscxml-design/SKILL.md → /vscxml-design) — this works but is a hack

Workaround

The community-recommended workaround (also used by us) is to embed the namespace in the directory name itself:

skills/
  vscxml-design/SKILL.md      → /vscxml-design  (unique + auto-invocable)
  vscxml-generate/SKILL.md    → /vscxml-generate
  vscxml-simulate/SKILL.md    → /vscxml-simulate
  vscxml-trace/SKILL.md       → /vscxml-trace

This gives uniqueness and auto-invocation but uses hyphens instead of the colon convention.

Related Issues

• #20802 — Skills with user-invocable: true don't show plugin prefix in autocomplete
• #41842 — Plugin skills/ directory does not register slash commands

Environment

• Claude Code CLI (Windows 11, April 2026)
• Plugin: vscxml-plugin (v0.3.0)
• Tested with marketplace install (/plugin add-marketplace, /plugin install vscxml)