Undocumented `skill:` frontmatter field in commands - does command-to-skill delegation exist?

[nathanvale]

Summary

Several community examples and skill templates use a skill: frontmatter field in command files (.claude/commands/*.md) to delegate execution to a named skill. This field is not documented and does not appear in the official frontmatter field list.

Example

# .claude/commands/dojo.md
---
description: Query the Agentic Dojo for pattern knowledge
argument-hint: "e.g. 'explain wave computation'"
model: sonnet
skill: agentic-dojo
---

$ARGUMENTS

The assumption is that skill: agentic-dojo would delegate execution to .claude/skills/agentic-dojo/SKILL.md.

Questions

1. Does skill: exist as a frontmatter field? It's not in the documented list (name, description, argument-hint, disable-model-invocation, user-invocable, allowed-tools, model, context, agent, hooks).

2. Is command-to-skill delegation a supported pattern? The docs state "Custom slash commands have been merged into skills" -- meaning a command file IS a skill. If there's no delegation mechanism, the correct approach is to put all logic directly in the SKILL.md and use name: to control the slash command name.

3. If skill: is not supported, what's the recommended pattern for a thin wrapper that invokes a richer skill? Current workaround: just use the skill directly with name: dojo in SKILL.md frontmatter to get /dojo.

Documented Frontmatter Fields

From https://code.claude.com/docs/en/skills:

• name, description, argument-hint, disable-model-invocation, user-invocable, allowed-tools, model, context, agent, hooks

skill: is not in this list.

Environment

• Claude Code CLI
• macOS Tahoe 26.2
• 2026-02-22

[github-actions]

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. Add forwards-to frontmatter field for command stubs that chain-load skills #16410
2. [FEATURE] Support skills: frontmatter in slash commands to load skills into command context #16922
3. [FEATURE] Enhance skills to be a superset of commands #15459

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[shanmugamshnker]

Answer

skill: does not exist. There is nothing to "delegate" to.

Commands and skills are the same thing now. The docs literally say "Custom slash commands have been merged into skills."

So if you want /dojo, you have two options:

Option A: Put it in commands

.claude/commands/dojo.md

Option B: Put it in skills

.claude/skills/dojo/SKILL.md

Both give you /dojo. There is no need for a "thin wrapper" command that delegates to a skill — the command IS the skill.

The skill: field that people are using in their frontmatter does nothing. It is silently ignored.

---

Test Evidence

Setup: Created a test project with a command using skill: in frontmatter:

# .claude/commands/delegate-test.md
---
description: Test if skill field delegates to a skill
skill: test-skill-a
---
$ARGUMENTS

# .claude/skills/test-skill-a/SKILL.md
---
description: Knows about zorblax patterns for data transformation.
allowed-tools: Read
---

Result (Claude Code 2.1.50, macOS):

claude -p "List all available slash commands and skills you see."

1. test-skill-a: Knows about zorblax patterns for data transformation.
2. delegate-test: Test if skill field delegates to a skill

delegate-test showed up as its own separate command — it did NOT delegate to test-skill-a. The skill: field was silently ignored with no error or warning.