Skill tool shows empty available_skills list

[dcodesdev]

Description

The skill tool's description shows an empty <available_skills></available_skills> tag, indicating 0 skills are available to the agent even when skills may be present in the workspace.

Expected Behavior

The <available_skills> section should list all available skills that the agent can load, similar to how other tools list their capabilities.

Actual Behavior

When checking the skill tool description, it shows:

<available_skills> </available_skills>

This means the agent sees 0 skills available, even though:

1. The skill system exists and has a skill function
2. Skills may be configured in .claude/skills/ or .opencode/skills/
3. The agent is told it can "Load a skill to get detailed instructions for a specific task"

Impact

• Agents cannot discover what skills are available
• Users have to manually know skill names to reference them
• The skill discovery mechanism appears broken

Steps to Reproduce

1. Ask the agent "how many skills are available to you"
2. Agent will report 0 skills due to empty <available_skills> tag
3. This occurs even if skills are present in the workspace

Environment

• OpenCode version: 1.0.203
• Platform: Linux

Related Issues

• Does opencode actually support finding skills at .claude/skills? #6266 - Questions about .claude/skills support
• Customized Skills loading is slow and unrecognizable #6949 - Skills loading being slow/unrecognizable
• skill can't find scripts path #6900 - Skill can't find scripts path

This appears to be a separate issue from skills not loading - this is about the skill list not being populated in the tool description that gets sent to the agent.

[github-actions]

This issue might be a duplicate of existing issues. Please check:

• Customized Skills loading is slow and unrecognizable #6949: Customized Skills loading is slow and unrecognizable (related to skill visibility and loading)
• [BUG] Skill loading returns "[object Promise]" instead of actual skill list #6018: Skill loading returns "[object Promise]" instead of actual skill list (directly related to skill list not being populated)
• Does opencode actually support finding skills at .claude/skills? #6266: Does opencode actually support finding skills at .claude/skills? (related to skill discovery mechanism)

Feel free to ignore if none of these address your specific case.

[github-actions]

To stay organized issues are automatically closed after 90 days of no activity. If the issue is still relevant please open a new one.

[cogni-ai-ee]

Same here, but for github action.

I've configured skill folder in the config:

"skills": {
  "paths": [
    "${{ runner.temp }}/.skills"
  ]
}

but it failed to load the skill files.

Agent response:

Results:

1. Skill Tool Attempt: Attempting to load the skill via skill(name="mermaid") failed. The tool reported that the skill was not found and listed only a subset of skills (robust-commands, vim-ex, context-aware-ops, ansible, molecule).
2. Filesystem Verification: Despite the tool failure, I verified that the skill definition exists on the filesystem at /home/runner/work/_temp/.skills/mermaid/SKILL.md.
3. Root Cause: The skill is present in the environment skill directory and documented in the local AGENTS-RUNTIME.md, but it has not been registered in the <available_skills> block of the agent system prompt.

Conclusion:
The config (skill files) has indeed been added and is accessible in the workspace, but a synchronization or registration step is missing to make it loadable out of the box via the dedicated skill tool.

[cogni-ai-ee]

Call path for tool description (skill tool)

1. Tool registry builds tool descriptions, including skill tool description via describeSkill(agent)

const describeSkill = Effect.fn("ToolRegistry.describeSkill")(function* (agent: Agent.Info) {
  const list = yield* skill.available(agent)
  if (list.length === 0) return "No skills are currently available."
  return [
    ...
    Skill.fmt(list, { verbose: false }),
  ].join("\n")
})

2. skill.available(agent) is implemented in skill service:

const available = Effect.fn("Skill.available")(function* (agent?: Agent.Info) {
  const s = yield* InstanceState.get(state)
  const list = Object.values(s.skills).toSorted((a, b) => a.name.localeCompare(b.name))
  if (!agent) return list
  return list.filter((skill) => Permission.evaluate("skill", skill.name, agent.permission).action !== "deny")
})

3. If filtered list is empty, describeSkill emits:

• "No skills are currently available."
• so the tool description shows no available skills.

---

Other callsite of Skill.available(agent)

System prompt also uses it (separate from tool description):

skills: Effect.fn("SystemPrompt.skills")(function* (agent: Agent.Info) {
  if (Permission.disabled(["skill"], agent.permission).has("skill")) return
  const list = yield* skill.available(agent)
  return [
    ...
    Skill.fmt(list, { verbose: true }),
  ].join("\n")
}),

So both tool description and system prompt skills block are permission-gated.

---

Where skills enter memory before filtering

discoverSkills(...) + loadSkills(...) populate state.skills; then available(agent) filters that state.
So empty available list can mean:

• no discovered/parsed skills, or
• discovered skills exist but all denied by agent.permission.

---

Where agent.permission is consumed

The filtering uses agent.permission directly at:

• Permission.evaluate("skill", skill.name, agent.permission) in Skill.available(...).

How to configure skill permissions?

[cogni-ai-ee]

Ok, in my case, I've fixed it in the configuration by allowing the skills. E.g. in opencode config file:

...
  "permission": {
    "skill": {
      "*": "allow"
    }
  }
...

or set it in OPENCODE_PERMISSION variable (see schema).