claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix Skills edited via Customize UI not reflected in Code tab (storage path mismatch) [3 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

Skills edited via the Claude desktop app's Customize UI are not reflected in responses from the Code tab of the same app. The Code tab appears to read from a different skill storage path than the one Customize UI writes to, so edits saved in Customize silently fail to reach the agent the user is actively interacting with.

This report distinguishes between what was directly observed and what is inferred, since I could only verify one side of the pipeline end-to-end.

Environment

• OS: macOS 15 (Darwin 25.3.0)
• Claude desktop app: current as of 2026-04-24
• Plan: Max
• Shell: zsh

Observed (verified end-to-end)

1. In the Customize UI (opened from the Claude desktop app), I edited after-yoga-data/references/yoga-timetable.md, updating the file from April schedule to May schedule.
2. Reopening Customize confirmed the save — it displays the May content.
3. The on-disk file at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/local-agent-mode-sessions/skills-plugin/<uuid>/<uuid>/skills/after-yoga-data/references/yoga-timetable.md contains the May content. (confirmed by reading the file directly)
4. In the Code tab of the same app, asking the agent to load that skill returned the April content.
5. The file at ~/.claude/skills/after-yoga-data/references/yoga-timetable.md still contains the April content. This is the file the Code tab actually read.

So the Code tab is clearly reading from ~/.claude/skills/, not from the Customize UI's save path.

Inferred (not individually verified)

• I have not tested whether Chat or Cowork tabs pick up the Customize edit in their own responses. I assumed they do based on the UI layout grouping them with Customize, but this should be verified by Anthropic internally.
• I also found a third candidate path used for chat-installed plugins: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/local-agent-mode-sessions/<uuid>/<uuid>/rpm/plugin_*/skills/ I did not verify which tabs read this path; I only observed its existence on disk.

Summary of Paths Found on Disk

The concrete fault confirmed is: #1 is written by Customize but not read by the Code tab; the Code tab reads #3, which Customize does not update.

Reproduction

1. Open Claude desktop app → Customize (from any tab that exposes it)
2. Edit any file under a personal skill, e.g. after-yoga-data/references/yoga-timetable.md, to a distinctive new value.
3. Save. Reopen Customize and confirm the new value is shown.
4. Open the Code tab in the same app.
5. Ask the agent to read the same file through its Skill/Read tools.

Expected: agent returns the new value. Actual: agent returns the pre-edit value, because ~/.claude/skills/... was not updated by the Customize save.

Impact

• Paying (Max) users have hit this behavior repeatedly without any in-product hint that the Customize edit didn't propagate to the tab they're working in.
• The UI affirms "saved" and displays the new content, while the AI silently answers from a stale copy — a cross-state failure that is hard to self-diagnose.
• Users spend time arguing with the model ("I just updated this, why don't you see it?") when the real cause is path mismatch in the product.

Current Workaround (user-side, should not be necessary)

Manually symlinking each skill directory from the Customize path into ~/.claude/skills/, plus a SessionStart hook in ~/.claude/settings.json to re-sync on every new Code-tab session so chat-installed plugins are also picked up. This requires shell scripting and ongoing maintenance.

Requested Fix

1. Unify skill storage so the Code tab reads the same source as whatever the Customize UI writes to, or
2. Ship an official automatic sync that keeps the Code tab's skill directory in lockstep with the Customize save path.
3. Optionally, in the Customize UI, show which tabs actually load a given skill — so users aren't misled when a tab doesn't see their edit.

Note on prior version

This issue was first submitted with stronger architectural claims about Chat and Cowork tabs sharing storage. Those were not individually verified by me and have been moved to the "Inferred" section above. The core symptom — Customize edit not reaching the Code tab — is reproducible and verified.