Files

SKILL.mdagentsreferences

Install

Install the containing plugin

/plugin install shared-skills@llm-skills

Invoke this skill after installation

/shared-skills:ls

Download ls-skill.zip

This skill is bundled inside shared-skills. Install the plugin once, then Claude Code can use any of its included skills. Browse the full plugin repository at github.com/alisonaquinas/llm-shared-skills.

SKILL.md

name: ls description: > List directory contents with ls for exploring file systems, inspecting permissions, ownership, sizes, timestamps, and hidden files. Use when the agent needs to survey what exists in a directory, check file attributes, sort by time or size, or feed a file list into a pipeline.

ls

List directory contents with flexible formatting, sorting, and filtering.

Quick Start

Verify availability: ls --version (GNU) or ls --help
List current directory: ls
Long listing with hidden files: ls -lah

Intent Router

references/cheatsheet.md — Common flags, long listing, hidden files, sorting, and output formats
references/advanced-usage.md — Recursive listing, combining with pipelines, GNU vs BSD differences, scripting patterns
references/troubleshooting.md — Color issues, broken symlinks, special characters in filenames, cross-platform differences

Core Workflow

Start with a plain ls to survey the directory
Add -l for permissions, ownership, size, and timestamp
Add -a to include hidden (dot) files
Add -h to make sizes human-readable
Sort by time (-t), size (-S), or reverse (-r) as needed
Verify paths before acting on listed files

Quick Command Reference

ls                          # List current directory
ls -l                       # Long format: permissions, owner, size, date
ls -a                       # Include hidden files (dotfiles)
ls -lah                     # Long, all files, human-readable sizes
ls -lt                      # Sort by modification time, newest first
ls -lS                      # Sort by size, largest first
ls -ltr                     # Sort by time, oldest first (useful for logs)
ls -R                       # Recursive listing
ls -1                       # One entry per line (good for pipelines)
ls -d */                    # List directories only
ls -lh *.log                # Long listing filtered by glob
ls --color=auto             # Colorised output (GNU only)
man ls                      # Full manual

Safety Notes

Area	Guardrail
Read-only	`ls` never modifies files. It is safe to run in any directory.
Glob expansion	Shell globs expand before `ls` sees them. Unexpected matches can list unintended files. Quote globs when passing to scripts.
Broken symlinks	`ls -l` shows symlink targets; broken links display in red (with `--color`) but do not cause errors by default.
Special characters	Filenames with spaces or newlines can break pipelines. Use `ls -1` combined with `find -print0` / `xargs -0` for robust scripting.
GNU vs BSD	macOS ships BSD `ls`. Many GNU flags (`--color`, `--group-directories-first`) are unavailable. Use `gls` (from coreutils) on macOS for GNU behaviour.

Source Policy

Treat man ls and ls --help as runtime truth for available flags.
Check ls --version to confirm GNU vs BSD variant before using GNU-only flags.
For reliable scripting over arbitrary filenames, prefer find with -print0 over ls output parsing.

ls