Autocomplete picker silently drops duplicate skill-as-commands when multiple plugins ship the same skill name (`cold-start-interview`)

Author: hershmireCreated May 27, 2026Updated May 29, 2026

Summary

When two Claude Code plugins both ship a skill with the same name and argument-hint: in frontmatter (so each auto-promotes to a slash command), Claude Code Desktop's slash autocomplete displays them without their plugin-name prefix. When the names collide across plugins, only one of the colliding skills is surfaced in the picker — the others are invisible to discovery, though they remain callable via the full /<plugin>:<skill> form.

This affects claude-for-legal directly because every plugin in the family ships its own cold-start-interview by design (each domain's intake interview, intentionally composable). A user who installs more than one *-legal plugin can only discover one of the cold-start interviews via the picker.

Repro

  1. Install two plugins that both ship a cold-start-interview skill:

    /plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-for-legal
    /plugin install corporate-legal@claude-for-legal
    /plugin install privacy-legal@claude-for-legal
  2. In the input, type /cold-st.

    Observed: autocomplete shows exactly one entry — cold-start-interview from one of the two plugins (whichever wins lookup order). The description tooltip is prefixed with the source plugin in parens, e.g. (corporate-legal) ..., but there's no visible affordance for the other plugin's version of the skill.

  3. Type the full /privacy-legal:cold-start-interview and submit.

    Result: runs successfully — the privacy-legal version of the skill executes normally. Confirms the namespaced command is registered; only the picker is hiding it.

Expected

Either of:

  • Display both colliding commands with their plugin-name prefix as separate entries (corporate-legal:cold-start-interview, privacy-legal:cold-start-interview).
  • Display both unprefixed entries with their source-plugin in the description tooltip ((corporate-legal) ... and (privacy-legal) ...) so users can pick whichever they meant.
  • Any equivalent visual that lets users discover all colliding skill-as-commands.

Worth noting

  • The READMEs in this repo already canonicalize the namespaced form (/corporate-legal:closing-checklist etc.), presumably anticipating this. Users who follow the README explicitly are unaffected.
  • Real slash commands (defined as files in commands/*.md) do display with the prefix in autocomplete — e.g., plugin-dev:create-plugin from anthropics/claude-plugins-official/plugin-dev shows fully namespaced. Only skill-as-commands (auto-promoted from skills/<name>/SKILL.md with argument-hint: in frontmatter) have the prefix stripped, leading to this collision. The asymmetry feels like the picker's display logic forgot to apply namespace prefixes to the auto-promoted path.

Why this matters here

claude-for-legal is explicitly designed to be installed selectively but composably — a GC at a private company might install corporate-legal, employment-legal, and ip-legal; a DPO might install privacy-legal alongside corporate-legal. Each plugin's cold-start-interview is intentional, and the inter-plugin family is meant to coexist. The autocomplete picker silently hiding all-but-one of these breaks that composition model for anyone discovering via the picker.

Likely affects other reused skill names across the family too (e.g., matter-workspace appears in corporate-legal and possibly others).

Workaround

Always invoke colliding skills with the full /<plugin>:<skill> form. Works correctly; just isn't discoverable from autocomplete.

Environment

  • Claude Code Desktop (latest as of filing)
  • macOS
  • Encountered while vendoring claude-for-legal plugins into a private team marketplace via git-subdir source entries — but the bug reproduces identically when installing both plugins directly from this repo's marketplace, so it's not specific to vendoring.

The root-cause fix likely lives in Claude Code Desktop's slash-autocomplete render path rather than this repo, but filing here since this is the most-affected plugin family and the maintainers may have the most direct line to that team.

Source: anthropics/claude-for-legal