Find Skill

Purpose

Discover available skills that match the current task. This skill prevents reinventing the wheel — before manually executing a complex workflow, check if a skill already provides optimized instructions for it.

When to Use

• User asks for something that sounds like a repeatable workflow (code review, research, deployment, architecture review, etc.)
• You're about to spend significant effort on a multi-step task
• User mentions a skill name but you're not sure it exists
• You want to see all skills across a certain domain

Workflow

Step 1: Scan available skills

Use file_read or Glob to list available skills:

Glob: /mnt/skills/builtin/*/SKILL.md
Glob: /mnt/skills/my/*/SKILL.md

Each directory name is the skill name; each SKILL.md contains the skill's description and workflow.

Step 2: Match by description

For skills whose name doesn't obviously match the task, read their SKILL.md frontmatter to get the description. The YAML frontmatter is between --- fences at the top:

---
name: skill-name
description: What this skill does
license: MIT
---

Key matching signals:

1. Skill name — exact or fuzzy keyword match against the user's request
2. Description — semantic fit with the task requirements
3. Domain overlap — the skill's category matches the task's domain

Step 3: Load the best match

Once a skill is identified, call file_read on its SKILL.md location to load the full workflow instructions. Follow the skill's progressive loading pattern — read referenced resources (references/, templates/, scripts/) only when needed.

Step 4: Report or execute

• Single clear match: Load the skill and follow its workflow without further confirmation
• Multiple candidates: Present a brief summary to the user: "I found skills for A, B, and C — which should I use?"
• No match: Tell the user "No built-in skill matches this task. I'll proceed manually. To create a skill for this, use skill_manage."

Skill Categories

Built-in skills are located at /mnt/skills/builtin/. User-created skills are at /mnt/skills/my/. Built-in skills are read-only; user skills can be edited.

Quick Reference