Kiro IDE does not follow symlinks in ~/.kiro/skills/ — symlinked skills not available to agent

[aliulashayir]

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• I have searched for duplicate or closed issues

Operating System

macOS 15.6.1

Kiro Version

0.10.78

Bug Description

Kiro IDE does not resolve symbolic links in the ~/.kiro/skills/ directory. Skills installed as symlinks (pointing to ~/.agents/skills/) are not recognized by the agent and cannot be activated, while skills in real directories at the same path work fine.

Steps to Reproduce

1.Install skills via the open agent skills ecosystem (e.g., impeccable.style / npx skills add)
2.This creates skill folders in ~/.agents/skills/ and symlinks them into ~/.kiro/skills/
3.Open Kiro IDE and check available skills
4.Then when you try to import the skill from the ~/.agents/skills/ folder it prompts you saying the skill is avaible would you like to overwrite it
5.Only when you overwrite it shows up

Expected Behavior

All skills in ~/.kiro/skills/ should be available to the agent, regardless of whether the folder is a real directory or a symlink.

Conversation ID

No response

Additional Context

Only skills in real directories are available. Symlinked skill folders are silently ignored.
you have to manually copy the skills to the .kiro/skills folder.
cp -r ~/.agents/skills/clarify ~/.kiro/skills/clarify

[github-actions]

🤖 Potential Duplicate Detected

This issue appears to be similar to:

• #5867: Skills not auto-loading based on trigger word matching (85% similar)

What happens next?

• ⏰ This issue will be automatically closed in 3 days
• 🏷️ If this is not a duplicate, you can prevent automatic closure by adding a comment or reacting with 👎 to this message.
• 💬 Comment on the original issue if you have additional information

Why is this marked as duplicate?
Both issues relate to skills not being properly recognized or loaded by Kiro - the new issue describes symlinked skills not being available, while #5867 describes skills not auto-loading based on triggers. Both involve skills being present but not accessible to the agent.

[aliulashayir]

This might be the root cause of the other skill loading based issues. Symlinks don't seem to be working corretly

[github-actions]

Thank you for your feedback! 🙏

The duplicate label has been removed and this issue has been sent back for maintainer review.

A maintainer will review this issue shortly.

[cgy859854649]

I'm facing the same issue.
version: 0.11.63
windows 11

[OneMHz]

As a workaround you can tell kiro to use ls -L ~/.kiro/skills/<your skill> or ls ~/.kiro/skills/<your skill>/ with the trailing slash. I think it's just using a naive ls folder without the trailing slash, which just lists the symlink itself.

[AnilMaktala]

Hey @aliulashayir, thanks for the clear report. And thanks to @cgy859854649 for confirming this on Windows — this tells us it's cross-platform, not macOS-specific. This is a valid bug — symlinked skill folders should be resolved transparently. Marking as a bug for the team to investigate further.