[Bug]: npx skills add -a claude-code -g installs to ~/.agents/skills/ without creating ~/.claude/skills/ symlink

[drewdrewthis]

Problem

npx skills add <source> -g -a claude-code installs the skill to ~/.agents/skills/<skill>/ but does not create a symlink at ~/.claude/skills/<skill>/. Claude Code only reads from ~/.claude/skills/, so the skill is invisible.

Expected behavior

Per the agent mapping in src/agents.ts, Claude Code is a non-universal agent with globalSkillsDir: ~/.claude/skills/. The installer should create a symlink from ~/.claude/skills/<skill>/ → ~/.agents/skills/<skill>/.

Actual behavior

Only the canonical ~/.agents/skills/<skill>/ directory is created. No symlink appears in ~/.claude/skills/.

Reproduction

npx skills add drewdrewthis/git-orchard-rs --skill install-orchard -a claude-code -g

Output:

◇  Installation Summary ─────────────╮
│                                    │
│  ~/.agents/skills/install-orchard  │
│    copy → Claude Code              │
│                                    │
├────────────────────────────────────╯

After install:

• ~/.agents/skills/install-orchard/SKILL.md exists ✅
• ~/.claude/skills/install-orchard/ does NOT exist ❌
• Claude Code cannot see the skill ❌

Context

• PR fix: use symlink mode by default for non-universal agents #799 fixed a related symlink regression for non-universal agents, but this case still appears broken.
• Related to [Bug]: remove -a <agent> doesn't work — skills should install directly into agent-specific directories instead of shared canonical dir #810 (shared canonical dir issues).
• Workaround: ln -s ~/.agents/skills/<skill> ~/.claude/skills/<skill>

Environment

• npx skills (latest via npx, April 2026)
• macOS
• Claude Code installed at ~/.claude/

[replete]

I can confirm this behaviour, worse still --copy doesn't seem to work either, so if ~/.claude/skills doesn't exist, it isn't copied.

I've also confirmed that:

• creating ~/.claude/skills folder does not resolve the issue (even with --copy) - nothing is copied or symlinked.
• manually copying my skill to ~/.claude/skills worked as expected
  

[wjones127]

Used this as a workaround for this:

mkdir -p "${HOME}/.claude/skills" \
  && for d in "${HOME}/.agents/skills"/*;\
       do [ -d "$d" ] || continue; skill=${d##*/};\
     [ -e "${HOME}/.claude/skills/$skill" ] \
      || ln -s "$d" "${HOME}/.claude/skills/$skill"; \
  done

[justmao945]

why not fix this ??

[Hsintao]

Used this as a workaround for this:我使用这个作为解决方法的替代方案：

mkdir -p "${HOME}/.claude/skills"
&& for d in "${HOME}/.agents/skills"/;
do [ -d "$d" ] || continue; skill=${d##/};
[ -e "${HOME}/.claude/skills/$skill" ]
|| ln -s "$d" "${HOME}/.claude/skills/$skill";
done

that works

[drod3763]

It should also support CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR