kyuna0312/Manage Skills

Manage Skills

Audit and reduce skill token overhead. Skills silently consume 1,000-28,000 tokens each when loaded.

Token Cost of Skills

Each loaded skill SKILL.md body costs tokens every response:

• Small skill: ~500-1,000 tokens
• Medium skill: ~1,500-3,000 tokens
• Large skill: ~3,000-5,000 tokens
• Plugin with 10 skills: potentially 15,000-50,000 tokens constant overhead

Audit Loaded Skills

To identify which skills are active, instruct user to run:

# List all installed plugins and their skills
ls ~/.claude/plugins/

# Check active plugin config
cat ~/.claude/settings.json | grep -i plugin

Then read and report:

1. Each plugin name
2. Number of skills per plugin
3. Estimated token cost per skill (check SKILL.md word count)

Disable Unnecessary Skills

Disable entire plugin:

Edit ~/.claude/settings.json and set plugin enabled to false, or remove plugin from active list.

Request selective loading:

Tell user to add to their claude.md:

## Skill Loading Policy
Only load skills when explicitly requested with /skill-name.
Do not auto-load skills based on conversation context.
Disabled plugins: [list plugins not needed]

Recommended Minimal Skill Set

Keep only skills actively needed for current work. Disable:

• Design/SEO/marketing plugin skills during coding sessions
• Large documentation plugins when not writing docs
• Any plugin with 5+ skills where you only use 1–2

Use autoLoadSkills: false in settings.json to prevent all skills from loading automatically.

Estimate Skill Token Cost

For each skill directory, estimate cost:

# Count words in all SKILL.md files
find ~/.claude/plugins -name "SKILL.md" -exec wc -w {} \; | sort -n

Skills over 3,000 words = high cost. Consider disabling or requesting optimization.

Additional Resources

• references/skill-audit.md — Full audit procedure and cost reduction strategies