Claude Skills Troubleshooting

Overview

Diagnose and resolve common Claude Code plugin and skill configuration issues. This skill provides systematic debugging workflows for plugin installation, enablement, and activation problems.

Quick Diagnosis

Run the diagnostic script to identify common issues:

python3 scripts/diagnose_plugins.py

The script checks:

• Installed vs enabled plugins mismatch in both directions (installed-but-not-enabled and enabled-but-not-registered)
• Missing enabledPlugins entries in settings.json
• Stale marketplace cache using known_marketplaces.json lastUpdated
• Missing, malformed, timezone-free, or future lastUpdated metadata
• Invalid plugin configurations

Treat lastUpdated as the only cache-freshness source. Do not fall back to cache-directory modification times: marketplace updates can refresh nested files without changing that directory timestamp. The diagnostic exits nonzero for stale caches or invalid freshness metadata.

Common Issues

Issue 1: Plugin Installed But Not Showing in Available Skills

Symptoms:

• /plugin shows plugin as installed
• Skill not appearing in Skill tool's available list
• Plugin metadata exists in installed_plugins.json

Root Cause: Known bug (GitHub #17832) - plugins are added to installed_plugins.json but NOT automatically added to enabledPlugins in settings.json.

Diagnosis:

# Check if plugin is in installed_plugins.json
cat ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json | grep "plugin-name"

# Check if plugin is enabled in settings.json
cat ~/.claude/settings.json | grep "plugin-name"

Solution:

# Option 1: Use CLI to enable
claude plugin enable plugin-name@marketplace-name

# Option 2: Manually edit settings.json
# Add to enabledPlugins section:
# "plugin-name@marketplace-name": true