claude-ops: audit-skill-visibility never determines reachability in a live run and misattributes skillOverrides to plugin skills

[kyle-sexton]

Summary

The skill's headline promise is "which skills can the model actually see". In every live run the reachability field is unknown for all skills with cause enablement-undetermined, because collect_fleet_at hardcodes plugin_enabled: None and no collector reads enabledPlugins. Two of the classifier's four documented-settings paths are dead: plugin-not-enabled has no collector, and skill-override-off cannot fire because the frontmatter parser never emits skill_override, and would be wrong if it did, since skillOverrides does not apply to plugin skills at all. The SKILL.md description says a plugin skill can be hidden by skillOverrides; docs and binary say it cannot.

Evidence

• Live run in this repo, Claude Code 2.1.263: 258 of 258 skills reachability: unknown, cause enablement-undetermined, while .claude/settings.json carries an enabledPlugins map with one plugin set to false.
• scripts/audit_skill_visibility.py: collect_fleet_at (around line 369) sets "plugin_enabled": None with the comment "Enablement is not knowable from the filesystem alone"; collect_installed (around line 569) never sets it either; reachability (around lines 989-1006) branches on skill_override and plugin_enabled, neither of which any live collector fills.
• Official docs (settings-reference, skills): enabledPlugins maps plugin@marketplace to a Boolean at Any file scope; false means installed but disabled; "Project settings take precedence over user settings ... set it to false in .claude/settings.local.json ... managed settings override local settings." And: "Plugin skills are not affected by skillOverrides."
• Binary (2.1.263): enabledPlugins schema text "Settings precedence is user < project < local < flag < policy", per-key merge, last defined scope wins. Listing resolver: if(e.type!=="prompt"||e.source==="plugin")return"on" so plugin-sourced skills never consult skillOverrides.

Expected behaviour

1. --installed mode: read enabledPlugins through the settings reader introduced by claude-ops: audit-skill-visibility derives the listing budget from hardcoded defaults instead of the effective settings and model #4076 (per-key merge, user < project < local < policy; flag scope reported as unread). A plugin resolved to false makes every one of its skills reachability: hidden, cause plugin-not-enabled, evidence naming the scope file that supplied the false. Absent from every scope resolves to enabled, matching the product's default.
2. --plugins-root (checkout) mode: enablement is a category error for a checkout. Emit one report line "reachability not assessed: a checkout is not an install" and set each row's reachability to not-assessed instead of 258 rows of unknown. Frontmatter-based misconfigured still fires in both modes.
3. Remove the skillOverrides path: delete the skill-override-off branch in reachability and any skill_override field, and remove skillOverrides from the SKILL.md description and body as a cause a plugin skill can lose visibility to. State the current rule and its reason (plugin skills are governed by enabledPlugins; skillOverrides governs non-plugin skills this audit does not enumerate), per .claude/rules/skill-bodies-state-current-rules.md.
4. Keep unknown only for the case the sources genuinely cannot answer (a manifest entry whose settings scopes are all unreadable), and say why in remedy.

Acceptance criteria

• [event-driven] WHEN .claude/settings.json sets playgrounds@melodic-software: false and the script runs with --installed, every playgrounds:* row reads reachability: hidden, cause plugin-not-enabled, evidence .claude/settings.json.
• [event-driven] WHEN user settings set a plugin to false and project settings set it to true, its skills are model-reachable (project wins); WHEN local sets false, they are hidden (local wins).
• [state-driven] WHILE running with --plugins-root, no row reads unknown for enablement; the report carries the single not-assessed line.
• [unwanted-behaviour] IF a settings file is unreadable or malformed, THEN affected rows read unknown with a remedy naming the file, never hidden or model-reachable.
• [ubiquitous] No code path or SKILL.md sentence claims skillOverrides affects a plugin skill; ReachabilityTest covers the three precedence cases and the checkout-mode line.
• scripts/affected-tests.sh --run is green.

Out of scope

• The settings reader itself and managed-scope vendoring (owned by claude-ops: audit-skill-visibility derives the listing budget from hardcoded defaults instead of the effective settings and model #4076; this issue depends on it).
• Non-plugin skills (.claude/skills, user skills), which this audit does not enumerate.

Related

• Depends on: claude-ops: audit-skill-visibility derives the listing budget from hardcoded defaults instead of the effective settings and model #4076 (shared settings reader).
• Sibling: the unscored ranking presentation issue, linked in the first comment.
• Official sources: code.claude.com/docs/en/settings (enabledPlugins, skillOverrides, precedence), /docs/en/skills ("Override skill visibility from settings": "Plugin skills are not affected by skillOverrides"), /docs/en/plugins-reference (plugin disable).

[kyle-sexton]

Sibling issues from the same audit run: #4076 (settings-derived budget inputs, the dependency) and #4077 (unscored ranking presentation).

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