skill-radar

Trigger-driven skill invocation for Claude Code. Fewer false positives, no forced narration, subagent-safe.

A lean alternative to using-superpowers — fire skills on signal, not on every keystroke.

What you get

• Explicit Trigger Taxonomy — skills fire on real signals, not "1% chance → invoke."
• No-skill list — single-file edits, lookups, and trivial fixes stay direct.
• Mode-aware announce — silent in terse/caveman modes; one-line for heavyweight skills only.
• Subagent priority injection — re-states the user > skills > default hierarchy in dispatched prompts (closes obra/superpowers#237).

Why

• Triage, not paranoia. Upstream using-superpowers enforces "1% chance → invoke." That's a false-positive engine — see "The Controllability Problem" for the full case. skill-radar swaps it for an explicit Trigger Taxonomy.
• Silent on noise. Single-file edits, lookups, status checks: no skill, no narration, no preamble.
• Mode-aware. Terse / caveman / quiet workflows skip the forced Announce: Using X line.
• Subagent-safe. Re-states the priority hierarchy in dispatched prompts to close the obra/superpowers#237 injection gap.

Install

Plugin marketplace (recommended)

/plugin marketplace add Roni-quant/skill-radar
/plugin install skill-radar@skill-radar-marketplace

Manual (Claude Code)

git clone https://github.com/Roni-quant/skill-radar ~/.claude/skills-src/skill-radar
ln -s ~/.claude/skills-src/skill-radar/skills/skill-radar ~/.claude/skills/skill-radar

Codex / Gemini install paths are tracked for v0.2 — see Roadmap.

Try it

Once installed, send any of these to Claude Code and watch what skill-radar decides:

You say	skill-radar does
Build a CSV export feature for the trades table.	Matches "build" → invokes brainstorming → writing-plans.
Fix the off-by-one in line 42.	Matches "fix" → invokes systematic-debugging.
Rename decision_id to trade_id in trades.py.	No match → direct edit. No skill, no narration.

That's the whole product. Three lines of input → three different routing decisions, no over-firing, no forced preamble.

How it works

Internally, every user message goes through this loop:

1. User sends a message.
2. skill-radar matches the message against its Trigger Taxonomy.
3. Match → invoke the indicated skill, then act.
4. No match → act direct. No skill load, no announcement.
5. If an invoked skill turns out to be a wrong fit mid-task → say so once, abort, continue direct.
6. Heavyweight rigid skills (TDD, debugging) get a one-line announce; everything else stays silent in terse modes.
7. Subagents inherit a re-stated priority hierarchy in their dispatch prompt.

For full transcripts of each routing decision in real sessions, see Examples.

Comparison

Dimension	using-superpowers	skill-radar
Trigger rule	"1% chance → invoke"	Explicit taxonomy match
No-skill cases	Implicit / discouraged	Explicit list
Mode awareness	Forced narration	Respects terse/caveman
SKILL.md size	~117 lines	~50 lines
Subagent injection	Documented gap (#237)	Re-states priority
Description style	Workflow summary risk	Triggers only

Philosophy

• Triage > paranoia. Most messages don't need a workflow.
• Skills earn invocation. Loading a skill is a context cost.
• Description bloat = drift. Triggers in description; steps in body.
• Subagents need explicit priority. Re-state the hierarchy on dispatch.

Full discussion in docs/philosophy.md.

Examples

• examples/transcript-feature.md — build chain.
• examples/transcript-bugfix.md — debugging chain.
• examples/transcript-trivial.md — no-skill case.

Compatibility

Coexistence: skill-radar is a drop-in alternative to upstream using-superpowers, not a replacement that breaks it. Both can be installed simultaneously — pick one as the active triage layer in your global CLAUDE.md.

To prefer skill-radar globally, add to your ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md:

## Skill triage
Use `skill-radar` for skill invocation decisions. Do not invoke `using-superpowers` simultaneously.

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md for v0.2, v0.3, v1.0 plans and out-of-scope notes.

Support

Questions, bug reports, taxonomy gaps: open an issue.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Short version: edits to Trigger Taxonomy require a new pressure test.

Credits

• obra/superpowers — built the foundation we lean on.
• obra/superpowers-marketplace — marketplace.json shape.
• anthropics/skills — single-repo plugin+marketplace pattern.
• obra/superpowers#237 — subagent injection gap.
• superpowers:writing-skills — description-drift fix, TDD-for-skills methodology.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.