Skills from marketplace plugins not activated after installation (missing copy to ~/.claude/skills/)

Summary

Skills installed via the Claude Code Desktop marketplace are not activated. Plugin files are downloaded correctly, but the step that should make skills available (copying to ~/.claude/skills/) does not occur. As a result, only skill-creator — installed during initial setup — works. All other plugin skills are silently inactive.

Environment

• Version: Claude Code Desktop v2.1.142
• OS: Windows 11
• Account: tuliotac93@gmail.com

How the Skills System Works

Claude Code loads skills from two sources:

1. Built-in skills (hardcoded in the binary)
2. ~/.claude/skills/ directory — locally installed skills, read at each startup

The marketplace downloads plugins to:

~/.claude/plugins/marketplaces/claude-plugins-official/plugins/<plugin>/skills/<skill>/

But this location is not read by the system. For a plugin skill to work, it must be in ~/.claude/skills/.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open Claude Code Desktop
2. Go to the marketplace and install any plugin that contains skills (e.g., plugin-dev, mcp-server-dev)
3. Restart Claude Code
4. Try to invoke any skill from the installed plugin

Expected: The skill is available and can be invoked
Actual: The skill does not appear — only built-in skills and skill-creator are available

Root Cause

The plugin installation process has two steps, but only the first occurs:

1. ✅ Plugin download → files saved to ~/.claude/plugins/marketplaces/
2. ❌ Skill activation → copy to ~/.claude/skills/ does not happen

The initial auto-install (run once on first setup, flag officialMarketplaceAutoInstalled: true) correctly copied skill-creator, but subsequent installations via the UI do not replicate this behavior.

Affected Plugins / Skills

The following plugins exist in ~/.claude/plugins/marketplaces/ with skills that should be active but are not:

| Plugin | Skills |
|--------|--------|
| mcp-server-dev | build-mcp-server, build-mcp-app, build-mcpb |
| plugin-dev | agent-development, command-development, hook-development, mcp-integration, plugin-settings, plugin-structure, skill-development |
| claude-code-setup | claude-automation-recommender |
| claude-md-management | claude-md-improver |
| playground | playground |
| hookify | writing-rules |
| frontend-design | frontend-design |
| math-olympiad | math-olympiad |
| session-report | session-report |

User-installed plugins (discord, telegram, fakechat, imessage) are registered in .claude.json but their skills are also not loaded.

Possibly Related: Feature Flags Disabled

Two server-side feature flags are false for this account and may be blocking plugin skill loading:

| Flag | Value |
|------|-------|
| tengu_skills_dashboard_enabled | false |
| claude_code_skills_dashboard_enabled_cli | false |

Workaround

Manually copy any skill from the marketplace directory to ~/.claude/skills/. After restarting Claude Code, the skill becomes available.

# Enable all skills from a specific plugin (PowerShell)
$plugin = "plugin-dev"
$src = "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\plugins\marketplaces\claude-plugins-official\plugins\$plugin\skills"
$dst = "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\skills"
Get-ChildItem $src | ForEach-Object {
    Copy-Item -Recurse -Force $_.FullName $dst
}

Expected Fix

The installation step should copy skill directories from ~/.claude/plugins/.../skills/ to ~/.claude/skills/ whenever a plugin is installed via the Desktop UI — mirroring what the initial auto-install does for skill-creator.