Skill profiles

Claude Code loads every skill's description at startup, with a small budget (~1% of the context). With many skills, descriptions get truncated and the agent stops picking them by itself. A profile leaves active only the skills for the current work.

Catalog

File ~/.claude/skill-profiles.json (if it doesn't exist, create it with the structure below and ask the person which groups they want based on the skills in ~/.claude/skills/).

{
  "active": "all",
  "groups": {
    "core": ["handoff", "perfiles", "find-skills", "last30days", "humanizer"],
    "frontend": ["design-taste-frontend", "high-end-visual-design", "emil-design-eng", "apple-design"],
    "marketing": ["copywriting", "content-strategy", "social", "cold-email", "ads", "seo-audit"],
    "video": ["hyperframes", "hyperframes-cli", "media-use"]
  },
  "profiles": {
    "code": { "desc": "Essentials only", "groups": ["core"] },
    "frontend": { "desc": "Interface design", "groups": ["core", "frontend"] },
    "marketing": { "desc": "Marketing and content", "groups": ["core", "marketing"] },
    "video": { "desc": "Video production", "groups": ["core", "video"] },
    "all": { "desc": "Everything on", "groups": ["core", "frontend", "marketing", "video"] }
  }
}

Apply a profile

1. Read skill-profiles.json and resolve the active set (union of the profile's groups).
2. In ~/.claude/settings.json, write skillOverrides with "off" for every skill in ~/.claude/skills/ that isn't in the active set, and no entry for the active ones. Don't touch other keys. Back up first.
3. Update active in skill-profiles.json.
4. Tell the person: the change shows after restarting the session.

Always merge the full JSON with a script or temp file; never interpolate skill names inside a shell command.

Rules

• Only skills in ~/.claude/skills/. Don't touch plugin or built-in ones.
• Never delete files: a profile only writes skillOverrides. Going back to all turns everything on.
• If the work doesn't fit a profile, propose the closest one and offer to create a new one.
• If they ask to enable a single skill that's off, remove its entry from skillOverrides without changing the rest.
• Limitation: only one profile at a time for the whole machine.