Summary

When both document-skills and example-skills plugins are enabled (which is the default after installing from this marketplace), Claude Code loads the exact same 17 skills twice under two different prefixes (document-skills:* and example-skills:*). This wastes context tokens and can cause routing confusion.

Reproduction

1. Install the anthropic-agent-skills marketplace in Claude Code
2. Enable both document-skills and example-skills in settings.json (default behavior)
3. Check the skill list shown in the system-reminder

Expected: Each plugin loads a different subset of skills (e.g., document-skills = office formats, example-skills = creative/builder tools)

Actual: Both plugins load all 17 skills identically:

• document-skills:xlsx, document-skills:pdf, document-skills:docx, document-skills:pptx, document-skills:algorithmic-art, document-skills:brand-guidelines, document-skills:canvas-design, document-skills:claude-api, document-skills:doc-coauthoring, document-skills:frontend-design, document-skills:internal-comms, document-skills:mcp-builder, document-skills:skill-creator, document-skills:slack-gif-creator, document-skills:theme-factory, document-skills:web-artifacts-builder, document-skills:webapp-testing
• example-skills:slack-gif-creator, example-skills:theme-factory, example-skills:pdf, ... (same 17)

Root Cause

Both plugins in marketplace.json reference the same source directory ("source": "./"). CC's plugin cache mechanism copies ALL skills from the marketplace source to each plugin's cache, regardless of per-plugin allocation intent.

Verified: both cache directories have identical file counts (376 files) and the same content hash (98669c11ca63).

Impact

• Context waste: 17 duplicate skill descriptions loaded into every conversation
• Routing ambiguity: Claude may randomly pick document-skills:pdf or example-skills:pdf for the same task

Workaround

Disable one plugin in settings.json:

"example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills": false

Suggested Fix

Either:

1. Merge into one plugin — expose all 17 skills under a single prefix
2. Scope the cache — respect per-plugin skill allocation defined in marketplace.json so each plugin only caches its designated subset
3. Remove one — if the split was unintentional, remove the duplicate plugin definition

Environment

• Claude Code (latest as of 2026-04-13)
• macOS