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Claude Code skills face description limits, impacting AI's ability to select tools

By PulseAugur Editorial · [2 sources] ·

Claude Code, a feature within Anthropic's Claude AI, has limitations on how much descriptive text it can process for its skills. Two main constraints are at play: a per-skill limit of 1,536 characters for descriptions and a total budget for all skills, which is 1% of the model's context window. When these limits are exceeded, Claude Code silently drops descriptions, starting with the least frequently used skills, making them harder for the AI to select. Users can diagnose these issues using commands like /doctor and /context, and address them by trimming descriptions, setting skills to "name-only" via `skillOverrides`, or increasing the budget. AI

IMPACT Users of Claude Code need to manage skill descriptions to ensure optimal AI performance and tool selection.

RANK_REASON Technical documentation detailing a specific feature's limitations and configuration.

Read on dev.to — Claude Code tag →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 2 sources. How we write summaries →

Claude Code skills face description limits, impacting AI's ability to select tools

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COVERAGE [2]

  1. dev.to — Claude Code tag TIER_1 English(EN) · Rulestack ·

    Too many Claude Code skills? How the listing budget decides which descriptions Claude sees

    <p>You add a skill. It triggers. You add ten more, and the first one quietly stops firing — same file, same description, same request. Nothing errored, so there is nothing to fix.</p> <p>This is not a prompt problem. It is a budget problem, and Claude Code exposes every number in…

  2. dev.to — Claude Code tag TIER_1 English(EN) · Rulestack ·

    Your Claude Code skill's description is being cut: the 1,536-char cap and the shared listing budget

    <p>You wrote a skill. The description is clear. You ask for exactly the thing it does, and Claude reaches for something else.</p> <p>Before you rewrite the description a fourth time, check whether Claude ever saw the whole thing. Two separate limits trim skill metadata before the…

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