Keeping Skills Current

Overview

Skills go stale the moment reality diverges from what's written. The person best placed to fix that is whoever notices the divergence, at the moment they notice it — not a scheduled review weeks later. This is a lightweight, Claude-Code-native alternative to heavyweight "observation log + periodic review" systems: no log file, no staging directory, no scheduler. Skills here are plain writable files, so the fix is just... making the fix.

When to Use

• A skill's documented approach turns out wrong, incomplete, or slower than what actually worked in practice
• The user corrects output that a skill's instructions drove
• A skill references a tool, path, or command that doesn't work as described (e.g. discovering sips has no brightness/exposure controls despite assuming it did)
• A better technique emerges mid-task and should become the skill's stated default, not stay a one-off workaround

Not for: a one-off personal preference with no reusable pattern — save that as a feedback memory instead (see Skill vs. Memory below).

Core Rule

If you notice you can improve a skill, edit it before moving on — don't just make a mental note or tell the user about it in passing. Skills live at ~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md, symlinked from my-claude-skills/<name>/ — directly editable, no approval workflow required for personal skills in this setup.