[Bug] Skills load full content at session start instead of lazy loading
Bug Description Title: Skills load full content at session start, not lazily as documented
Expected Behavior: Per the Skills documentation: "At startup, Claude loads only the name and description of each available Skill" with full SKILL.md content loading only when the skill is activated.
Actual Behavior: Full skill content appears to load at session start. My 21 skills consume ~38k tokens (19% of 200k context) before any work begins:
pricing-consultant: 4.4k tokens skill-creator: 4.3k tokens sora-2: 4.0k tokens positioning-consultant: 3.7k tokens veo-video-generator: 2.7k tokens saas-landing-page-expert: 2.5k tokens ... (21 skills total)
Evidence: Running /context at fresh session start shows full token counts per skill, not just name/description metadata (~100-200 tokens expected per skill).
Impact:
- Users with multiple skills lose significant context capacity
- Encourages deleting useful skills to save context
- Scales poorly as users add more skills
Suggested Fix:
- Implement true lazy loading (only load full SKILL.md when skill is invoked)
- Or add config option: disabledSkills: ["skill-name"] in settings.json
- Or add per-skill toggle to enable/disable in ~/.claude/skills/*/
Reproduction:
- Create 10+ skills in ~/.claude/skills/
- Start new Claude Code session
- Run /context immediately
- Observe full token counts per skill (not just metadata)
Environment Info
- Platform: darwin
- Terminal: Apple_Terminal
- Version: 2.0.76
- Feedback ID: aa298bd6-35c7-4e0d-b1ff-12b23fadd6ba
Errors
[]