Project skills are branch-scoped, but the / menu doesn't notice when the checkout moves

[dwyanewang]

What I'm trying to do

I keep several branches of the same repo open in Paseo, usually as worktrees, and the project's skills live in the repo (.claude/skills/…, committed). So a skill is part of a branch: the branch where I'm reworking our packaging flow has a build-paseo skill, the branch where I'm fixing a UI bug doesn't. I want the composer's / menu to show what's actually in the checkout I'm looking at right now — the same set the agent itself would find if I started it.

How I do it today

I run a desktop build and switch the checkout constantly, sometimes from Paseo's Git actions, sometimes with git switch in a terminal next to it.

After a switch, the / menu is still the previous branch's list. So I either keep a mental note of which entries are real on this branch, or restart the app to clear it. Picking a skill that isn't on this branch anymore just fails.

Where Paseo gets in the way

The failure mode is stale, not broken, which is what makes it cost time:

• A skill from the branch I left keeps sitting in /, looking completely normal, until I run it.
• The other direction is worse: I switch to the branch that has the skill and it never shows up. The first time this happened I assumed Paseo just didn't pick up project skills, and went looking in the wrong place for an hour.

Restarting the app fixes both, which is a strange thing to have to know.

What the flow would look like if it worked

• I switch branches → / reflects the new checkout. If the menu is open, it updates there and then.
• I add or delete an uncommitted skill file with an editor → the menu picks it up the next time I open it, and does not restart discovery under me while I'm mid-word in an open menu. Those two cases genuinely want different timing.
• Nothing else moves: other projects, and commands for agents that are already running, stay as they are.

Who else runs into this

Anyone who commits skills into a repo and switches branches inside Paseo, which gets more likely the more worktrees you keep. It's also the next layer down from #2325 / #2423 — those made project-local skills discoverable at all, and discovery works; it's only the cache lifetime that doesn't know the checkout moved.

I'd be curious how others are handling this today. Restarting the app is what I landed on and it can't be the intended answer.

Links

• bug: project skills stay stale in the / menu after the checkout's branch changes #4462 — repro steps and video for the stale behaviour
• fix(app): invalidate the project-skill cache when the checkout changes #4463 — the version I've been running, if it's useful for grounding the discussion
• fix(app): refresh project skills after checkout changes #2585 was an earlier PR for the same thing. I accidentally merged an unrelated feature branch into it, its diff ballooned to 58 files and it read as a feature PR — that was my mistake with the branch, not a claim about this workflow. Opening this per your note there.