[BUG] Skills truncated at 30 makes remaining skills undiscoverable

[kylesnowschwartz]

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] I can reproduce this bug with the latest version of Claude Code

Bug Description

Skills beyond the 30-skill display limit are completely undiscoverable by Claude. The <available_skills> section shows "Showing 30 of 39 skills due to token limits" - but those 9 truncated skills might as well not exist.

This is different from issue #11045 (which proposes router/hidden skills for 100+ skill libraries). This bug affects users with a modest number of skills (~37) who expect all their skills to be discoverable.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install multiple skill-providing plugins (e.g., anthropic-agent-skills, plugin-dev, xdg context-efficient-tools)
2. End up with >30 total skills
3. Ask Claude to do something that matches a truncated skill (e.g., "parse the YAML frontmatter" when yq skill exists)
4. Claude doesn't know about the skill because it's not in <available_skills>

Expected Behavior

All installed skills should be discoverable. Either:

1. Raise the limit (37 skills is ~4-5k tokens - not unreasonable)
2. Use smarter truncation (prioritize by relevance to current prompt)
3. At minimum, show skill names without descriptions for truncated skills so Claude knows they exist

Actual Behavior

Skills are silently truncated. Claude has no way to know truncated skills exist. Users who write hooks to remind Claude to "check <available_skills>" find their hooks are useless for truncated skills.

Analysis

I analyzed my 37 skills by description length:

526 chars - Hook Development (plugin-dev)
489 chars - Command Development (plugin-dev)
448 chars - xlsx (anthropic-agent-skills)
...
150 chars - ripgrep (xdg context-efficient-tools)
117 chars - yq (xdg context-efficient-tools)
117 chars - jq (xdg context-efficient-tools)

The xdg skills (yq, jq, ripgrep) have concise, well-written descriptions but are truncated in favor of skills with verbose descriptions. The truncation algorithm punishes good documentation practices.

Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.0.60 (Homebrew)
• OS: macOS
• Total skills installed: 37
• Skills shown: 30
• Skills truncated: 7-9

Related Issues

• #11045 - Proposes router/hidden skills for large skill libraries (100+)
• #12140 - Proposes /skills command to list all skills

This issue is narrower: the current 30-skill limit is too aggressive for typical users with a handful of plugins installed.

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