use-your-skills

Use your skills

A drift corrector for skill-use discipline: the skills are in context to be used, not ignored. The method, re-anchor, audit the work in flight, correct forward, report, and the tone that firing this is not an accusation, lives in ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/context/re-anchor-audit-correct.md. Read it; this file adds only what is specific to discovering and invoking the skills already available.

The discipline this re-anchors

A skill listing is loaded into context so the model knows what is available: every model-invocable skill's name (always) and its description (subject to the listing budget), with the full body loading only when the skill is invoked (Skills docs, fetched 2026-08-10). The listing covers only what the MODEL can reach, a skill set to disable-model-invocation: true is manual-only: its description is not in the model's context and the model never auto-invokes it, so it surfaces only when a user types /name (the inverse, user-invocable: false, stays in the model's listing but is hidden from the / menu). This corrector therefore audits only what the model could actually have reached: a model-visible skill that sat in the listing and went unused, its procedure reinvented. Or skipped. Instead of invoked. It does not fault the model for not auto-firing a manual-only skill that was never in its listing. Over a long session the listing loses salience the same way a standing rule does; this re-anchors the habit of consulting it.

The discipline, at each of the three surfaces where skills apply:

• This conversation. Before doing multi-step or specialized work, scan the in-context listing for a skill that already owns it, and invoke that skill rather than improvising the procedure. A skill's description is written to say when it applies. Read it as a routing signal, not decoration.
• The current task. Map the task's shape to the skills that fit it. Often more than one across a task's phases (research, plan, implement, review), and invoke each at its moment rather than carrying the whole task by hand.
• Delegated (subagent) work. A fresh non-fork subagent does not inherit your skill listing. It discovers project, user, and plugin skills on disk through the Skill tool during execution (Subagents docs, fetched 2026-08-10). So name the relevant skills in the delegation prompt so the subagent knows to reach for them. For a custom subagent that should always carry a discipline, recommend its skills: frontmatter, which preloads the full skill content into the subagent at startup (preload, not access. The Skill tool is already available to the subagent unless removed via tools / disallowedTools). One caveat, doc-confirmed: skills: can preload only a model-invocable skill; a skill set to disable-model-invocation: true cannot be preloaded (Claude Code skips it and logs a warning), because preloading draws from the same set the model can invoke. For a manual-only discipline, put its guidance in the prompt directly rather than expecting a preload. This is guidance, not a config change the skill performs.