[BUG] Built-in skills not available in Claude Code

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

I would expect the built-in skills to be available in Claude Code, but they are not, even if explicitly enabled in Claude Settings. This is quite confusing.

What Should Happen?

Built-in skills should be available everywhere.

Error Messages/Logs

**Prompting Claude:**

list raw contents of <available_skills>



<available_skills>
<skill>
<name>
docx
</name>
<description>
Comprehensive document creation, editing, and analysis with support for tracked changes, comments, formatting preservation, and text extraction. When Claude needs to work with professional documents (.docx files) for: (1) Creating new documents, (2) Modifying or editing content, (3) Working with tracked changes, (4) Adding comments, or any other document tasks
</description>
<location>
/mnt/skills/public/docx/SKILL.md
</location>
</skill>

<skill>
<name>
pdf
</name>
<description>
Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables, creating new PDFs, merging/splitting documents, and handling forms. When Claude needs to fill in a PDF form or programmatically process, generate, or analyze PDF documents at scale.
</description>
<location>
/mnt/skills/public/pdf/SKILL.md
</location>
</skill>

<skill>
<name>
pptx
</name>
<description>
Presentation creation, editing, and analysis. When Claude needs to work with presentations (.pptx files) for: (1) Creating new presentations, (2) Modifying or editing content, (3) Working with layouts, (4) Adding comments or speaker notes, or any other presentation tasks
</description>
<location>
/mnt/skills/public/pptx/SKILL.md
</location>
</skill>

<skill>
<name>
xlsx
</name>
<description>
Comprehensive spreadsheet creation, editing, and analysis with support for formulas, formatting, data analysis, and visualization. When Claude needs to work with spreadsheets (.xlsx, .xlsm, .csv, .tsv, etc) for: (1) Creating new spreadsheets with formulas and formatting, (2) Reading or analyzing data, (3) Modify existing spreadsheets while preserving formulas, (4) Data analysis and visualization in spreadsheets, or (5) Recalculating formulas
</description>
<location>
/mnt/skills/public/xlsx/SKILL.md
</location>
</skill>

<skill>
<name>
skill-creator
</name>
<description>
Guide for creating effective skills. This skill should be used when users want to create a new skill (or update an existing skill) that extends Claude's capabilities with specialized knowledge, workflows, or tool integrations.
</description>
<location>
/mnt/skills/examples/skill-creator/SKILL.md
</location>
</skill>

</available_skills>


**Prompting Claude Code**

list raw contents of <available_skills>



Looking at the raw XML from my system prompt, here's the exact content of the <available_skills> section:

  <available_skills>

  </available_skills>

  It's completely empty - just the opening and closing tags with whitespace in between. There are no skills registered or available in your current Claude Code environment.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Enable skills in Claude
2. Enable skill-creator skill
3. Try to use skill-creator in Claude Code

Claude Model

Sonnet (default)

Is this a regression?

No, this never worked

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

2.0.22

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

Use case:
I want to create a new skill to use a particular private library / API across my other projects. I cannot use skill-creator from inside that project (with all the project context) to create that skill.

I understand there are several workarounds, but still this is the most obvious way to do it and since there is no clear error message and LLMs always tries to do "something similar", it took me quite some time to realize this is the culprit.