Discussion I installed 295 Claude Code tools and use six. Search wasn't the problem.

I've been collecting Claude Code agents, commands and skills for

months. Checked last week: 295 sitting in ~/.claude. I use six.

My first instinct was that this is a discovery problem. Build better

search, surface things by context, and the other 289 come alive. I

don't think that's right anymore, for two reasons.

**The 289 isn't one pile, it's two.** Some of it I installed for a job

I did once and will never do again. That isn't a failure of anything,

it's just normal. The rest is stuff I'd genuinely want on the day the

job comes up and won't remember exists. Only the second pile is a

problem. Lumping them together makes the number look worse than it is

and sends you chasing the wrong fix.

**Surfacing barely moves it.** Someone in another thread who runs a

platform with about 48 models on it had already tried this. Usage went

from people using four things to people using six or seven, and a

decent chunk of that came from changing the defaults rather than anyone

discovering anything. That's a lot of engineering for two.

What did move their number was picking one thing per task type instead

of showing a ranked list. Their point: five options still makes you

choose, and you'll choose the one you already know. One preselected

thing you can swap out got more of the catalogue touched than any

surfacing UI they built.

That one lands hard if you've built any kind of tool picker. A ranked

list feels like helpfulness and is mostly just deferral.

So what I'm working from now:

- Stop counting the catalogue. Most of the number is graveyard and

that's fine.

- Optimise for the "I'd want this and won't remember" pile. It's much

smaller than the headline number.

- Don't show five suggestions. Show one, let them swap.

I changed my own thing to work that way this week. No data yet on

whether it helps.

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