[FEATURE] Extend skillOverrides to plugin-namespaced skills
Preflight Checklist
- [x] I have searched existing requests
- [x] This is a single feature request
Problem Statement
Claude Code's skillOverrides setting supports on, name-only, user-invocable-only, and off, but explicitly excludes plugin skills.
This leaves users of multi-skill plugins with no way to remove one unwanted skill from Claude's context. Permission rules such as:
{
"permissions": {
"deny": ["Skill(pr-workflow:update-pr-description)"]
}
}
prevent invocation, but the skill's name and description remain in the model's skill listing. That preserves both the context cost and the routing noise.
This matters for users with 100+ installed plugin skills. A plugin may contain valuable workflows alongside one that duplicates a user's existing skill. Today the choices are to carry the duplicate description in every session, fork the plugin, or disable the entire plugin.
Proposed Solution
Allow namespaced plugin keys in skillOverrides:
{
"skillOverrides": {
"pr-workflow:update-pr-description": "off",
"pr-workflow:walk-through-work-history": "user-invocable-only"
}
}
Expected behavior should match non-plugin skills:
off: absent from model context and command menususer-invocable-only: absent from model context but manually invocablename-only: only the namespaced name is listedon: current behavior
Verified Behavior
Reproduced on Claude Code 2.1.226:
Skill(pr-workflow:walk-through-work-history)blocks invocation.- The denied skill remains visible to the model.
"pr-workflow:walk-through-work-history": "off"is ignored.- The skill remains visible and directly invocable.
The current documentation also states that plugin skills are not affected by skillOverrides.
Prior Request
This follows #47747, which covered the same underlying need and was closed automatically as stale. Its closing comment explicitly requested a new issue if the feature remained relevant. The gap remains reproducible in the current release.
Impact
Beyond token cost, large uncurated skill listings reduce skill-selection quality. Duplicate or loosely matching plugin skills compete with the user's preferred workflow even when permission rules prevent the eventual invocation.