mcpbeat

Finding Skills

oaustegard/claude-finding-skills

Discover and load skills on demand from /mnt/skills/user/. Use when you need a capability but don't know which skill provides it, when the boot-emitted skill list is names-only and you need a full description, or when you want to list the catalog. Verbs are list (names only), search (rank by name/description match against a query), and show (emit the full SKILL.md for a named skill).

This is a copy. The original lives at oaustegard/finding-skills.

2k tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
3
files
ships runnable scripts
0
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
137
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository 
npx skills add https://github.com/oaustegard/claude-skills --skill finding-skills

The instruction itself

6 sections, as written by the author

Finding Skills

Skills on disk at /mnt/skills/user/ are a catalog — too expensive to preload as descriptions in every session's context. This skill is the on-demand accessor, analogous to Anthropic's ToolSearch for MCP tools.

Usage

PY=/home/user/.spokes/claude-skills/finding-skills/scripts/skills.py

# List every skill by name (cheap, ~1.4KB)
python3 "$PY" list

# Search by keyword — ranks name matches above description matches
python3 "$PY" search "adversarial review"

# Load the full SKILL.md of a specific skill
python3 "$PY" show challenging

In a live CCotw session the script lives at /mnt/skills/user/finding-skills/scripts/skills.py.

When to reach for this

  • You have a task where a skill might help but no obvious name comes to mind → search <keywords>
  • The boot emitted names-only and you want the description of a candidate → show <name>
  • You want catalog breadth before picking an approach → list

Pattern

  • search "<what you want to do>" — get 3–10 ranked candidates
  • show <top-pick> — read its SKILL.md
  • Follow the SKILL.md's instructions (which may point at scripts/, references/, etc.)

Stop at step 1 if none of the candidates fit — don't shoehorn an unrelated skill onto the task.

Ranking

  • Exact match on skill name: 100
  • Substring match on skill name: 10
  • Substring match in description: 1 per match (multiple hits compound)

Case-insensitive throughout. Results sorted high-to-low, ties broken by name.

Output format

  • list: one skill name per line
  • search: tab-separated <name>\t<description (truncated to 200 chars)>, one per line
  • show: raw SKILL.md contents to stdout; exit 1 with a stderr message if not found

All three are line-oriented so they compose with grep, head, etc.

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take oaustegard/claude-finding-skills from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.