check-skill

# Skill activation check A skill only earns its keep if the model reaches for it at the right moment. That decision is made almost entirely from the skill's frontmatter `description` — so "does my skill trigger?" is a measurable question, and this is how you measure it: build a labelled set of user requests, run a real agent against each one, and score whether the skill was engaged. The user's request is: `$ARGUMENTS` ## Step 1 — Locate the target skill `$ARGUMENTS` may be a path to a `SKILL.md`, a path to the skill's **directory**, a skill name, or empty. - Empty: glob `.claude/skills/*/SKILL.md` and `**/skills/*/SKILL.md`. One match → use it. Several → list them and ask which. None → say so and stop. - A directory: use the `SKILL.md` inside it. - A name: find the matching skill directory. The **bare skill name is the directory name** containing `SKILL.md`. Read the frontmatter `description` and keep it in front of you: that string is what the model matches against, so it is the primary input to row design and the thing you will end up recommending edits to. **Measure its length while you are there — two separate budgets truncate it, and either one produces a low-recall result that looks exactly like bad wording.** 1. **Per-skill truncation.** `description` and `when_to_use` are concatenated and cut at a fixed character budget — **1,536 characters**, configurable via the `skillListingMaxDescChars` setting. Trigger text past the cutoff cannot affect activat...