Feature request: Indicate when a skill is being used

[wordify-nick]

Summary

When Claude responds using a skill from .claude/skills/, there's no indication to the user that a skill is being applied. It would be helpful to see which skill (if any) is guiding the response.

Current Behavior

• Skills are loaded silently from .claude/skills/
• Responses that use skills look identical to responses inferred from context
• No way to verify if a skill was actually used
• /skills command doesn't exist to list loaded skills

Desired Behavior

Some indication when a skill is active, e.g.:

> Reggie, how's my backlog?

⏺ Using skill: reggie-backlog-health

⏺ Bash(python reggie.py health --all)
...

Or a /skills command to list loaded skills and their trigger patterns.

Why This Matters

• Debugging: Hard to tell if a skill isn't working or just not triggering
• Trust: Users can't verify their skill customizations are being applied
• Development: When building skills, feedback on activation helps iteration

Environment

• Claude Code v2.0.69
• macOS

[github-actions]

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. [FEATURE] Add /skills command to list all available skills #12140
2. [Feature Request] Add visual differentiation for skills/agents/commands output with colors and icons #10122
3. [BUG] Skills System: Natural Language Intent Matching Completely Broken #10768

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[tonydehnke]

--- Commet removed --- wrong thread :)

[wordify-nick]

Thanks for flagging #12140 @tonydehnke - they're related but tackling different problems.

#12140 is about discovery - "what skills do I have available?"

This issue is about runtime feedback - "which skill is actually being used right now?" Both would benefit from a /skills command, but the core ask here is visibility into skill activation during responses. When you're developing or debugging skills, you need to know if they're actually triggering - not just that they exist.

[tonydehnke]

Oops, wrong thread, I 100% agree with your post, hope they implement this!

[wordify-nick]

I don't know if this has just been released, but i'm seeing this working now:

> do you know how to do an agent james performance review? 

⏺ Yes! There's a performance-review skill for exactly this. Let me invoke it.

⏺ Skill(performance-review)

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.