| name | skills-manager |
| description | Context-aware routing to skills and hooks management. Use when troubleshooting skill activation, fine-tuning keywords, or managing the automated documentation system. |
Skills Manager (Smart Router)
Purpose
Context-aware routing to skills and hooks management. Helps you troubleshoot, fine-tune, and manage the automated documentation system.
When Auto-Activated
- Discussing skills activation or hooks
- Creating new skills
- Keywords: skill activation, hook, troubleshoot, fine-tune, keyword, skill-rules.json, create skill, new skill, agentskills
- Debugging why a skill didn't activate or activated incorrectly
🚨 CRITICAL RULES
- Logs are your friend - Always check
.claude/logs/skill-activations.log first
- Test after changes - Always verify modifications to
skill-rules.json work
- Validate JSON - Use
jq to validate skill-rules.json before committing
- Keywords should be specific - Too-broad keywords cause false positives
📋 Quick Diagnostic Workflow
Problem: Skill Didn't Activate
-
Check logs:
tail -20 .claude/logs/skill-activations.log
-
Check current keywords:
cat .claude/hooks/skill-rules.json | jq '.skills."SKILL-NAME".promptTriggers.keywords'
-
Add missing keyword:
- Ask Claude: "Add 'KEYWORD' to SKILL-NAME"
- Or edit
.claude/hooks/skill-rules.json directly
-
Test:
echo '{"prompt":"test prompt"}' | .claude/hooks/skill-activation-prompt.sh
Problem: Skill Activated When Shouldn't
-
Identify the trigger - Check logs to see which keyword matched
-
Remove or make more specific:
- Remove: "Remove 'text' from localization-developer"
- Make specific: Replace "text" with "localized text"
-
Verify:
tail .claude/logs/skill-activations.log
🎯 Common Tasks
Add a Keyword
Quick: Ask Claude
"Add 'refactoring' to ios-dev-guidelines keywords"
Manual: Edit .claude/hooks/skill-rules.json
"keywords": [
"swift",
"refactoring"
]
Remove a Keyword
Quick: Ask Claude
"Remove 'text' from localization-developer, it's too broad"
Manual: Edit and remove from keywords array
Check What Activated
tail -20 .claude/logs/skill-activations.log
Look for:
✓ Matched: skill-name # ← This skill activated
No matches found # ← Nothing activated
Test Activation Manually
echo '{"prompt":"add feature flag"}' | .claude/hooks/skill-activation-prompt.sh
Should output skill suggestion if match found.
Auto-Learning Feature
What it does: When a substantial prompt (100+ chars OR 3+ lines) doesn't activate any skills, the system prompts you with available skills and auto-updates keywords based on your feedback.
Workflow:
- You submit a substantial prompt
- No skills activate
- System shows: "Should any of these skills be activated?"
- You respond: "Yes, localization-developer should activate"
- Claude extracts keywords from your prompt
- Claude runs:
.claude/hooks/utils/add-keywords-to-skill.sh localization-developer <keywords>
- skill-rules.json updated
- Future similar prompts auto-activate
Manual keyword extraction:
echo "Update space settings localization for membership tiers" | .claude/hooks/utils/extract-keywords.sh
.claude/hooks/utils/add-keywords-to-skill.sh localization-developer "membership" "tiers"
Logs:
- Missed activations:
.claude/logs/skill-activations-missed.log
- Learning updates:
.claude/logs/skill-learning.log
🔧 The System Components
Hooks (Automation)
Location: .claude/hooks/
What they do:
skill-activation-prompt.sh - Suggests skills based on your prompt
post-tool-use-tracker.sh - Tracks file edits
swiftformat-post-edit.sh - Auto-formats Swift files immediately after edit
notification-alert.sh - Sends macOS notifications when Claude needs input
Skills (Routers)
Location: .claude/skills/*/SKILL.md
The 7 skills:
ios-dev-guidelines - Swift/iOS patterns
localization-developer - Localization
code-generation-developer - Feature flags, make generate
design-system-developer - Icons, typography, colors
skills-manager - This skill (meta!)
code-review-developer - Code review standards
feature-toggle-developer - Feature toggle removal, cleanup detection
Configuration
Location: .claude/hooks/skill-rules.json
What it contains:
- Keywords for each skill
- Intent patterns (regex)
- File path patterns
- Priority settings
📊 Configuration Structure
{
"skills": {
"skill-name": {
"type": "domain",
"priority": "high",
"description": "Smart router to...",
"promptTriggers": {
"keywords": ["keyword1", "keyword2"],
"intentPatterns": ["(create|add).*?something"]
},
"fileTriggers": {
"pathPatterns": ["**/*.swift"],
"contentPatterns": ["SomePattern"]
}
}
},
📝 Creating New Skills (agentskills.io Spec)
Skills must follow the agentskills.io specification.
Required SKILL.md Format
Every skill must start with YAML frontmatter:
---
name: skill-name
description: What this skill does and when to use it (max 1024 chars).
---
...
Name Field Rules
- 1-64 characters
- Lowercase only:
a-z, 0-9, -
- No start/end hyphens:
skill-name ✅, -skill- ❌
- No consecutive hyphens:
my-skill ✅, my--skill ❌
- Must match directory name:
skills/my-skill/SKILL.md → name: my-skill
Description Field
- 1-1024 characters
- Must describe: What it does AND when to use it
- Include keywords that help agents identify relevant tasks
Good example:
description: Context-aware routing to the iOS localization system. Use when working with .xcstrings files, Loc constants, or user-facing text.
Optional Frontmatter Fields
---
name: skill-name
description: Required description.
license: MIT
compatibility: Designed for Claude Code
metadata:
author: anytype
version: "1.0"
---
Directory Structure
skill-name/
├── SKILL.md # Required - main skill file
├── scripts/ # Optional - executable scripts
├── references/ # Optional - additional docs
└── assets/ # Optional - templates, images
Quick Checklist for New Skills
⚠️ Common Issues
Hook Not Executing
Symptom: No activation messages, empty logs
Fix:
chmod +x .claude/hooks/*.sh
ls -l .claude/hooks/*.sh
Invalid JSON
Symptom: Hook fails silently
Fix:
jq . .claude/hooks/skill-rules.json
Too Many False Positives
Symptom: Skill activates too often
Fix: Make keywords more specific
- ❌ "text" → activates for everything
- ✅ "localized text" → more specific
📚 Complete Documentation
Full Guide: .claude/SKILLS_MANAGEMENT_GUIDE.md
For comprehensive coverage of:
- Detailed troubleshooting workflows
- Advanced regex patterns for intent matching
- Creating new skills from scratch
- Monitoring and maintenance
- Log rotation and cleanup
- Complete skill-rules.json reference
- Examples for every scenario
✅ Health Check Commands
ls -l .claude/hooks/*.sh
jq . .claude/hooks/skill-rules.json
tail -20 .claude/logs/skill-activations.log
grep "Matched:" .claude/logs/skill-activations.log | sort | uniq -c
echo '{"prompt":"your test"}' | .claude/hooks/skill-activation-prompt.sh
💡 Pro Tips
- Ask Claude to check logs - "Check the logs for my last prompt"
- Use logs for tuning - Review regularly to spot patterns
- Start broad - Add broad keywords, narrow if too many false positives
- Test everything - Always test after modifying skill-rules.json
- Document changes - Add comments in skill-rules.json
🔗 Related Docs
.claude/hooks/README.md - Complete hooks documentation
.claude/skills/README.md - Skills system overview
CLAUDE.md - Main documentation
Navigation: This is a smart router. For deep troubleshooting and management details, always refer to SKILLS_MANAGEMENT_GUIDE.md.
Quick help: Just ask "Check skills system health" or "Why didn't X skill activate?"