List Installed Skills

What You'll Learn

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

• Use openskills list to view all installed skills
• Understand the difference between (project) and (global) location tags
• Quickly count the number of project skills and global skills
• Verify if a skill is successfully installed

Your Current Challenges

After installing several skills, you may encounter these issues:

• "Which skills did I just install? I forgot."
• "Did I install this skill to project or global?"
• "Why can I see certain skills in project A but not in project B?"
• "I want to delete some unused skills, but I don't know their specific names"

The openskills list command is designed to solve these confusions—it's like a "directory" for skills, helping you see all installed skills and their locations at a glance.

When to Use This Approach

Scenario	Action
Confirm successful installation after installing a skill	Run openskills list to check if the skill appears
Switch to a new project and check available skills	Run openskills list to see which project skills are available
Take inventory before cleaning up skills	Run openskills list to list all skills, then delete unneeded ones
Debug skill loading issues	Verify that skill names and installation locations are correct

Core Concept

OpenSkills supports installing skills in 4 locations (in search priority order):

1. project .agent/skills - Project-level general skills directory (multi-agent environment)
2. global .agent/skills - Global general skills directory (multi-agent environment)
3. project .claude/skills - Project-level Claude Code skills directory
4. global .claude/skills - Global Claude Code skills directory

openskills list will:

1. Traverse these 4 directories to find all skills
2. Deduplicate: Display the same skill name only once (preferably showing project's)
3. Sort: Project skills come first, global skills come last; within the same location, sort alphabetically
4. Mark locations: Use (project) and (global) tags to distinguish
5. Summary statistics: Display count of project skills, global skills, and total count

Why is deduplication needed?

If you install the same skill (e.g., pdf) in both project and global, OpenSkills will preferentially use the project version. The list command only displays it once to avoid confusion.

Follow Along

Step 1: List All Installed Skills

Why Quickly view which skills are available in the current environment

Run the following command:

npx openskills list

What You Should See

If no skills are installed, it will display:

Available Skills:

No skills installed.

Install skills:
  npx openskills install anthropics/skills         # Project (default)
  npx openskills install owner/skill --global     # Global (advanced)

If skills are already installed, you'll see something like:

Available Skills:

  pdf                         (project)
    Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables...

  code-analyzer                (project)
    Static code analysis tool for identifying security vulnerabilities...

  email-reader                 (global)
    Read email content and attachments via IMAP protocol...

Summary: 2 project, 1 global (3 total)

Step 2: Understand Output Format

Why Understanding what each line represents helps you quickly locate the information you need

Output format explanation:

Part	Description
pdf	Skill name (extracted from the name field in SKILL.md)
(project)	Location tag: blue indicates project-level skill, gray indicates global skill
Comprehensive PDF...	Skill description (extracted from the description field in SKILL.md)
Summary: 2 project, 1 global (3 total)	Summary statistics: count of project skills, global skills, and total

Step 3: Verify Location Tags

Why Confirm that skills are installed in the expected location, avoiding confusion about "why can't I see this skill in this project"

Try the following operations to understand location tags:

# 1. Install a project-level skill
npx openskills install anthropics/skills -y

# 2. View the list (should show project tag)
npx openskills list

# 3. Install a global skill
npx openskills install anthropics/skills --global -y

# 4. View the list again (two pdf skills, only displayed once, tag is project)
npx openskills list

What You Should See

Available Skills:

  pdf                         (project)
    Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text...

Summary: 1 project, 0 global (1 total)

Even if the same skill is installed in both global and project, the list command will only display it once because the project version has higher priority.

Checklist ✅

Confirm the following:

• [ ] Running openskills list displays the list of installed skills
• [ ] Can distinguish between (project) and (global) tags (different colors: blue vs gray)
• [ ] Summary statistics are correct (project skills + global skills = total)
• [ ] Understand the rule that the same skill name is only displayed once

Common Pitfalls

Common Issue 1: Cannot Find Just-Installed Skill

Symptom: The install command succeeded, but list doesn't show it

Troubleshooting Steps:

1. Check if you're in the correct project directory (project skills are only visible to the current project)
2. Confirm if it was installed globally (using the --global flag)
3. Verify the installation location:

# Check project directory
ls -la .claude/skills/

# Check global directory
ls -la ~/.claude/skills/

Common Issue 2: See Strange Skill Names

Symptom: The skill name is not what you expected (e.g., folder name vs name in SKILL.md)

Cause: OpenSkills uses the name field in SKILL.md as the skill name, not the folder name

Solution: Check the frontmatter in SKILL.md:

---
name: pdf  # This is the name displayed by the list command
description: Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit...
---

Common Issue 3: Description Not Fully Displayed

Symptom: The skill description is truncated

Cause: This is due to terminal width limitations and doesn't affect the skill content

Solution: View the SKILL.md file directly to get the complete description

Lesson Summary

The openskills list command is the "directory" command for skill management, helping you:

• 📋 View all skills: See installed skills at a glance
• 🏷️ Distinguish location tags: (project) indicates project-level, (global) indicates global-level
• 📊 Summary statistics: Quickly understand the count of project and global skills
• 🔍 Troubleshoot issues: Verify if skills are successfully installed and locate skill positions

Core rules:

1. Same skill name is only displayed once (project takes precedence)
2. Project skills come first, global skills come last
3. Within the same location, sorted alphabetically

Up Next

In the next lesson, we'll learn Updating Skills.

You will learn:

• How to refresh installed skills from source repository
• Batch update all skills
• Handle old skills without metadata

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Appendix: Source Code Reference

Click to expand source code locations

Updated: 2026-01-24

Function	File Path	Line Numbers
list command implementation	src/commands/list.ts	7-43
Find all skills	src/utils/skills.ts	30-64
Search directory configuration	src/utils/dirs.ts	18-25
Skill type definition	src/types.ts	1-6

Key Functions:

• listSkills(): List all installed skills with formatted output
• findAllSkills(): Traverse 4 search directories and collect all skills
• getSearchDirs(): Return 4 search directory paths (in priority order)

Key Constants:

• None (search directory paths are dynamically calculated)

Core Logic:

1. Deduplication mechanism: Use Set to track processed skill names (skills.ts:32-33, 43, 57)
2. Location determination: Determine if it's a project directory via dir.includes(process.cwd()) (skills.ts:48)
3. Sorting rules: Project first, same location in alphabetical order (list.ts:21-26)