Claude Code Guide

Your skills are eating
your context.

By Dan Donovan, @askdandonovan

Every Claude Code session loads the name and description of every skill you've installed. If you've accumulated 50, 70, or 80+ skills, that's tokens spent before you type a word. Here's how to audit them and archive the ones you don't use.

5 Steps
~10 min Setup time
0 Skills deleted
$0 Extra cost
What's happening

Claude Code stores "skills": small instruction files that tell Claude how to do specific jobs, like writing scripts, researching competitors, or generating content. You install them once, and Claude knows how to use them.

The problem: every time you start a session, Claude scans your skills folder and loads every skill's name and description into context. One or two skills? No issue. But most power users accumulate dozens. I had 83.

The fix isn't to delete them. It's to archive the ones you don't actively use into a subfolder Claude can't see. They stay on your machine. You can restore any of them in seconds.

After this guide
Skills audited
A clear list of what you have and what each one does
Archive folder created
Unused skills stored safely, one prompt to restore any of them
Slimmer context
Only active skills load each session, more room for actual work
A system to maintain it
A repeatable process to stay lean as you install new skills
Before you start: You'll need Claude Code installed and open. Every prompt below gets pasted directly into Claude Code, no terminal required. If you don't have Claude Code yet, visit claude.ai/code to get started.
1

See what you're working with

Paste this into Claude Code. It'll list every skill you have installed and give you a total count.

Claude Code 
List all the folders inside my ~/.claude/skills/ directory — just the names, one per line. Then tell me how many there are in total.
Note: Your personal skills folder is at ~/.claude/skills/ and loads in every session. Project-specific skills (inside a project folder) only load when you're in that project.
2

Audit your skills: let Claude do the work

Paste this into Claude Code. It reads your skills folder, explains what each one does, and flags the ones you probably don't need anymore.

Claude Code 
Look at all the skills in my ~/.claude/skills/ folder. List each one and explain what it does in one sentence. Then flag any that: (1) do something very similar to another skill, (2) I likely installed once and haven't touched since, or (3) are for projects I'm probably not actively working on. Sort them from most likely still useful to least likely.

Claude will walk through each skill and give you a prioritised list. You decide what to keep. Don't let it remove anything without your say-so.

3

Create the archive folder

This creates an archive subfolder inside your skills directory. Claude Code only scans one level deep, so anything inside archive/ won't be loaded at startup, but stays safe on your machine.

Claude Code 
Create a folder called archive inside my ~/.claude/skills/ directory if it doesn't already exist. Then confirm it was created.
Why this works: Claude Code looks for skills at the pattern ~/.claude/skills/skill-name/SKILL.md. Anything nested one level deeper (like archive/skill-name/SKILL.md) doesn't match, so it's silently ignored at startup.
4

Move unused skills into the archive

For each skill you want to archive, paste this, replacing SKILL-NAME with the exact folder name from your list:

Claude Code: one skill at a time 
Move the folder called SKILL-NAME from my ~/.claude/skills/ directory into ~/.claude/skills/archive/. Don't delete it — just move it. Confirm when done.

You can also give Claude a list and let it handle them all at once:

Claude Code: multiple skills at once 
Move these folders from my ~/.claude/skills/ directory into ~/.claude/skills/archive/ — don't delete them, just move them. Confirm each one:
- skill-one
- skill-two
- skill-three
Start conservative. Your first pass, archive 10-20 skills you're confident you don't need. It's much faster to move a skill back than to wonder what happened to it. You can always do another pass later.
5

Verify it worked, and restore anytime

After archiving, check how many active skills you have left. Restart Claude Code and the archived skills won't appear in your available skills list.

Claude Code: check active skill count 
Count all the folders in my ~/.claude/skills/ directory, but don't include the archive folder itself in the count. Just give me the number of active skills remaining.

Need a skill back? One prompt restores it instantly:

Claude Code: restore a skill from archive 
Move the folder called SKILL-NAME from my ~/.claude/skills/archive/ back to ~/.claude/skills/. Then confirm it's been restored.
Tip: Restart Claude Code after restoring. The skill will be active in your next session. Do a quick audit every month or two. Keeping it under 20-30 active skills makes a noticeable difference in how much context is available for your work.

Prompts to use right now

Open Claude Code and start with any of these.

Full audit with Keep / Review / Archive ratings
The most thorough starting point. Claude reads every skill and gives each one a recommendation.
Claude Code 
Audit my ~/.claude/skills/ folder. List every skill, describe what it does in one sentence, and rate each one: Keep (I use this regularly), Review (I might need this), or Archive (probably unused). Group them by category if you can.
Find skills that overlap with each other
If you've installed multiple content or research skills over time, some probably do the same thing.
Claude Code 
Look at my ~/.claude/skills/ folder and find any skills that do similar things. For each pair or group that overlaps, tell me which one is more capable and which one I could safely archive.
See what's in your archive
Useful if you've archived a batch and want to check what's stored there before restoring anything.
Claude Code 
List everything inside my ~/.claude/skills/archive/ folder so I can see what I've stored there.