Finding Skills for Claude

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).

2k tokens

context cost

the whole folder, loaded on every use

files

ships runnable scripts

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.

Other skills for the same job

different authors, same section of the catalogue

Skill Creator

by anthropics

vendor ×10

Create new skills, modify and improve existing skills, and measure skill performance. Use when users want to create a skill from scratch, edit, or optimize an existing skill, run evals to test a skill, benchmark skill performance with variance analysis, or optimize a skill's description for better triggering accuracy.

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.

Replace with description of the skill and when Claude should use it.

35 tokens

Dispatching Parallel Agents

by ZhanlinCui

×5

Use when facing 2+ independent tasks that can be worked on without shared state or sequential dependencies

This skill should be used when the user wants to "create a skill", "add a skill to plugin", "write a new skill", "improve skill description", "organize skill content", or needs guidance on skill structure, progressive disclosure, or skill development best practices for Claude Code plugins.

Helps users discover and install agent skills when they ask questions like "how do I do X", "find a skill for X", "is there a skill that can...", or express interest in extending capabilities. This skill should be used when the user is looking for functionality that might exist as an installable skill.

Use when creating new skills, editing existing skills, or verifying skills work before deployment

26k tokens scripts

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take oaustegard/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.