Domain 3Skills, Plugins & Connectors
Progressive Disclosure
TL;DR
The token-efficient mechanism Claude uses to discover and load skills.
Definition
The token-efficient mechanism Claude uses to discover and load skills. Rather than reading your entire skill library at once (which would waste thousands of tokens), Claude scans metadata labels first (skill name, trigger conditions) and only loads the full instructions when a specific skill is needed. Like scanning book spines rather than reading every book cover to cover.
Exam Context
Know that progressive disclosure makes skills more efficient than pasting detailed instructions into the system prompt. This efficiency advantage is a key justification for using skills over long manual prompts.