Use this guide when you have a Claude Code plugin that ships a skill and you want GSD agents to load it automatically at spawn time. The global:<plugin>:<skill> entry form makes GSD emit a Skill-tool load directive so the agent picks up the plugin skill alongside any project-local or personal global skills.
This feature works on the Claude runtime only. On other runtimes (Codex, Antigravity, Cursor, etc.) the entry is skipped with a warning. Plan accordingly if your team uses multiple runtimes.
GSD does not install or manage Claude Code plugins. Install the plugin first:
/plugin install <plugin-source>
Verify the plugin is active and note the skill names it exposes. The plugin's documentation or README will list available skill names in the format plugin:skill — for example, coderabbit:code-review.
The name you need has two colon-separated segments after global::
global:<plugin>:<skill>
For example, if the plugin slug is coderabbit and it provides a skill called code-review, the entry is:
global:coderabbit:code-review
Each segment must consist of alphanumeric characters, underscores, or hyphens only. No spaces, no slashes, no dots.
Open .planning/config.json and add the namespaced skill to the array for the agent type that should receive it:
{
"agent_skills": {
"gsd-executor": [
"skills/project-conventions",
"global:coderabbit:code-review"
],
"gsd-verifier": [
"global:coderabbit:code-review"
]
}
}You can mix all three entry forms freely within the same array — project-relative paths, global:<name> personal skills, and global:<plugin>:<skill> plugin skills.
Or set it from the CLI:
gsd-tools query config-set agent_skills.gsd-executor '["skills/project-conventions","global:coderabbit:code-review"]'Start a phase on the Claude runtime. When the target agent is spawned, its Task() prompt will contain an <agent_skills> block that includes a Skill-tool load directive for the plugin skill:
<agent_skills>
Read these user-configured skills:
- @skills/project-conventions/SKILL.md
- Load the `coderabbit:code-review` skill via the Skill tool before proceeding (plugin-provided).
</agent_skills>Both entry types appear in the same Read these user-configured skills: section, interleaved in config order. There is no separate header for plugin-provided skills.
If you see [agent-skills] WARNING: Plugin-namespaced skill "global:coderabbit:code-review" requires a Skill-tool-capable runtime (claude) — skipping on runtime "<runtime>" in the logs, the entry is being skipped because the active runtime is not Claude. The configuration is still valid; no change is needed.
- Plugin must be pre-installed. GSD only references the skill by namespaced name. If the plugin is not installed in Claude Code, the Skill tool call will fail at agent runtime — GSD cannot validate plugin presence at configuration time.
- Which agents support it. All 22 GSD agent types that consume
agent_skillscarry theSkilltool, so any of them can load plugin-provided skills. See Agent Skills Injection — Supported Agent Types for the full list. - Non-Claude runtimes. The
global:<plugin>:<skill>entry is silently skipped with a warning on non-Claude runtimes. Project-relative andglobal:<name>entries work on all runtimes. - Security boundary. Plugin skill content is resolved entirely by Claude Code at agent runtime. GSD does not read, cache, or validate the plugin's files.