skill-scout

Skill Scout

Use this skill before creating a new skill. The goal is to avoid duplicating existing community or marketplace work, while still vetting anything external before adoption.

Source: salvaged from stale community PR #1232 by redminwang.

When to Use

• The user says "create a skill", "build a skill", "make a skill", or "new skill".
• The user asks "is there a skill for X?" or "does a skill exist that does Y?"
• The user describes a workflow and you are about to suggest creating a new skill.
• The user wants to fork or extend an existing skill.

If the user explicitly says to skip search or create from scratch, acknowledge that and proceed with the requested creation workflow.

How It Works

Step 1 - Capture Intent

Extract:

• The task the skill should perform.
• The trigger conditions for using it.
• The domain, tools, frameworks, or data sources involved.
• Three to five search keywords plus useful synonyms.

Step 2 - Search Local Sources

Search installed and marketplace skill names first. Local sources are preferred because they are already part of the user's environment.

find ~/.claude/skills -maxdepth 2 -name SKILL.md 2>/dev/null | grep -iE "keyword|synonym"
find ~/.claude/plugins/marketplaces -path '*/skills/*/SKILL.md' 2>/dev/null | grep -iE "keyword|synonym"

Then search frontmatter descriptions:

grep -RilE "keyword|synonym" ~/.claude/skills ~/.claude/plugins/marketplaces 2>/dev/null

Step 3 - Search Remote Sources

Step 4 - Vet External Matches

Step 5 - Rank Results

Step 6 - Present Decision Options

Examples

Result Table

User-Facing Summary

Anti-Patterns

Related