Get startedGet started for free

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

View Course

Exercise instructions

  • Start Claude Code with claude.
  • Ask Claude to read ~/.claude/skills/slow-code-finder/SKILL.md and explain why the current description doesn't match natural performance phrases.
  • Ask Claude to rewrite the description with natural trigger phrases.
  • Type /exit to exit Claude Code.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Turn theory into action with one of our interactive exercises

Start Exercise