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Skill Cleaner

Free

Optimize your AI skill usage and management.

by steipete6.5k stars on steipete/agent-scripts
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Updated Aug 10, 2026
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Free · Opens the source repo

What Skill Cleaner does

Skill Cleaner is a utility designed for developers and designers who need to manage and optimize their AI skills effectively. It provides a straightforward way to audit skills, trim prompt budgets, and identify duplicates across your skill repository. By running the Skill Cleaner script, users can gain insights into their skill usage over a specified period, helping to make informed decisions about which skills to retain or remove based on actual usage and budget constraints.

The workflow involves executing a command that analyzes your skills based on various parameters such as usage over the last few months, budget limits, and the presence of duplicate skills. The output report includes critical sections like 'Skill Budget', which details your current usage and budget allocation, and 'Description candidates', which highlights long descriptions that could be optimized to save on prompt budget. Users can also identify unused skills that have not been referenced recently, ensuring that only relevant skills remain active.

Skill Cleaner is particularly useful in environments where skill management is crucial, such as development teams or organizations utilizing AI agents like Codex or OpenClaw. By streamlining skills, users can enhance performance and reduce unnecessary complexity in their AI workflows. This tool is ideal for anyone looking to maintain a clean and efficient skill set without the hassle of manual auditing.

However, it is important to note that Skill Cleaner is not a substitute for comprehensive skill development or creation. It focuses solely on management and optimization rather than on the creation of new skills. Therefore, if you are looking to develop new functionalities or skills, you will need to use additional tools or frameworks designed for skill creation.

When to use it

Use Skill Cleaner when you need to audit your AI skills, trim unnecessary skills, or optimize skill descriptions for better budget management.

When not to use it

Skill Cleaner is not suitable for creating new skills or functionalities; it is focused on management and optimization of existing skills only.

What you can build with it

Auditing Skills for Optimization

Use Skill Cleaner to analyze your current AI skills and identify which ones are underutilized or duplicated.

Trimming Prompt Budgets

Run Skill Cleaner to find long descriptions that can be optimized, helping to save on prompt budgets for your AI models.

Managing Skill Duplicates

Utilize Skill Cleaner to scan for duplicate skills across your repositories, ensuring a cleaner and more efficient skill set.

How to install Skill Cleaner

View source

1. Install with the skills CLI

npx skills add steipete/agent-scripts/skill-cleaner --agent claude-code

2. Or install it manually

Download the skill folder and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/ for all projects, or .claude/skills/ to scope it to one repo. Restart Claude Code so it picks up the new skill.

Anthropic's agentic coding CLI, and the reference implementation of Agent Skills. Drop a skill folder into ~/.claude/skills and Claude Code loads it automatically whenever a task matches the skill's description. Claude Code docs

Inside SKILL.md

Written by steipete

Skill Cleaner

Use this when trimming skill prompt budget, finding duplicate skills, auditing enabled/disabled skill roots, or deciding which skills/plugins to remove.

Workflow

  1. Run the analyzer from this skill directory or repo root:
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --months 3

Useful variants:

node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --no-logs
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --no-live --no-logs
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --months 6 --max-log-mb 800 --deep-logs
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --context-tokens 272000 --budget-percent 2 --no-logs
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --root ~/Dropbox/boxd/skills --no-logs
node --experimental-strip-types skills/skill-cleaner/scripts/skill-cleaner.ts --root ~/.agents/skills --root-only --no-logs
  1. Read the report in this order:
  • Skill Budget: live Codex inventory, 2% budget, budgeted usage, and full-description pressure.
  • Description candidates: long descriptions where relaxed grammar saves prompt budget.
  • Duplicates: same skill name or near-identical description/body across Codex, plugin cache, repo siblings, and personal skill roots.
  • Unused candidates: no recent user mention or actual SKILL.md read in recent Codex/OpenClaw logs.
  • Root summary: where skills came from and whether config marks them disabled.
  1. Before deleting or editing:
  • Verify the kept copy exists and is loaded.
  • Prefer deleting repo-local or agent-scripts duplicates when Codex built-ins cover them.
  • Keep repo-local OpenClaw maintainer skills when they encode repo policy or live operations.
  • Preserve trigger nouns in descriptions: product, tool, action, object.

Analyzer Notes

  • By default, codex debug prompt-input supplies the exact model-visible skill list, order, names, and aliased paths. --no-live forces the broader filesystem fallback.
  • The broad filesystem scan remains for duplicate, disabled, and archived-cache diagnostics; it is not treated as the loaded inventory.
  • The script mirrors Codex's model-visible line shape: - name: description (file: path).
  • It applies Codex-like frontmatter rules: YAML frontmatter only, default name from parent dir, single-line sanitized name and description.
  • It follows Codex core-skills/src/render.rs: 2% of raw context_window, token cost ceil(utf8_bytes / 4), then full descriptions -> equal description truncation -> omitted minimum lines. Alias-table line cost is included.
  • It reads ~/.codex/models_cache.json for GPT-5.5 context_window; fallback is 272,000 tokens and 2%.
  • It scans only normal Codex/plugin/repo skill roots by default. Extra folders such as Dropbox archives are included only with --root <path>.
  • --root-only requires at least one --root <path>, skips the live Codex inventory, and scans only those supplied roots.
  • It realpath-dedupes roots, so symlinked roots such as ~/.codex/skills/agent-scripts -> ~/Projects/agent-scripts/skills do not create false duplicates.
  • For duplicate names, it reports description/body similarity and suggests deletion candidates only when bodies are near copies. Keep priority defaults to direct Codex system skills, then direct Codex skills, then plugin skills, then personal/repo copies.
  • It scans ~/.codex/history.jsonl and recent ~/.codex/sessions/**/*.jsonl by default. Add --deep-logs for archived sessions and common OpenClaw/Clawd log folders.
  • Usage evidence is heuristic: user $skill/use skill mentions and paths observed in tool-call arguments.

Output Policy

  • Suggest first; edit only when the user asks.
  • If asked to apply cleanup, make small grouped commits: descriptions, deletes, config disables.
  • Do not delete ignored/untracked skill dirs without naming the destination or confirming they are disposable.

Frequently asked questions about Skill Cleaner

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