Experiment reveals what forked Claude Code skills can and cannot access

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A developer ran a controlled experiment on Claude Code v2.1.263 to test what context a forked skill subagent can actually access versus what the documentation states. Three near-identical skills were tested: an inline version, a forked version using the default general-purpose agent, and a forked version using the Explore agent. The inline skill could see both a codeword planted in the conversation and a passphrase stored in CLAUDE.md, while both forked variants lost access to the conversation history and its codeword. The Explore agent fork also lost direct access to CLAUDE.md but independently ran a file-read command to retrieve the passphrase on its own. Additionally, each forked skill invocation cost approximately five times more than running the equivalent skill inline.

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