Why isn't my skill triggering?
A skill called slow-code-finder is installed in your personal skills directory. It appears in Claude's available skills list — but it never activates when you ask Claude to find performance problems. Phrases like "why is this slow?" or "make this faster" all go unmatched.
The culprit is the description: "Optimization heuristics for Big-O regressions." Claude uses semantic matching between your request and the description; if the vocabulary doesn't overlap, the skill never fires.
This exercise is part of the course
Introduction to Agent Skills
Exercise instructions
- Start Claude Code with
claude. - Ask Claude to read
~/.claude/skills/slow-code-finder/SKILL.mdand explain why the current description doesn't match natural performance phrases. - Ask Claude to rewrite the description with natural trigger phrases.
- Type
/exitto exit Claude Code.
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