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ls

Included in skill bundleshared-skillsView on GitHub ↗

Files

SKILL.mdagentsreferences

Install

Install only this skill with npx skills
npx skills add alisonaquinas/llm-shared-skills --skill 'ls' -g -y
Install the containing skill bundle
/plugin install shared-skills@llm-skills
Download ls-skill.zip
This skill is bundled inside shared-skills. Use npx skills when you only want this skill, or install the bundle once to make every included skill available through the plugin marketplace flow. Browse the full skill bundle repository at github.com/alisonaquinas/llm-shared-skills.

Invoke

Invoke this skill after installation
/shared-skills:ls

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

  1. Verify availability: ls --version (GNU) or ls --help
  2. List current directory: ls
  3. 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

  1. Start with a plain ls to survey the directory
  2. Add -l for permissions, ownership, size, and timestamp
  3. Add -a to include hidden (dot) files
  4. Add -h to make sizes human-readable
  5. Sort by time (-t), size (-S), or reverse (-r) as needed
  6. 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

AreaGuardrail
Read-onlyls never modifies files. It is safe to run in any directory.
Glob expansionShell globs expand before ls sees them. Unexpected matches can list unintended files. Quote globs when passing to scripts.
Broken symlinksls -l shows symlink targets; broken links display in red (with --color) but do not cause errors by default.
Special charactersFilenames with spaces or newlines can break pipelines. Use ls -1 combined with find -print0 / xargs -0 for robust scripting.
GNU vs BSDmacOS 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.

See Also

  • $find for recursive file location and -exec pipelines
  • $tree for visual directory hierarchy display
  • $stat for detailed per-file metadata
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