Skills are folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude loads dynamically to improve performance on specialized tasks. Skills teach Claude how to complete specific tasks in a repeatable way, whether that's creating documents with your company's brand guidelines, analyzing data using your organization's specific workflows, or automating personal tasks.
Loads dynamic skill folders with instructions and resources to enhance task performance.
/plugin marketplace add danielrosehill/documentation-plugin/plugin install diary-planner@danielrosehillmisc/Skills are folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude loads dynamically to improve performance on specialized tasks. Skills teach Claude how to complete specific tasks in a repeatable way, whether that's creating documents with your company's brand guidelines, analyzing data using your organization's specific workflows, or automating personal tasks.
Each skill is self-contained in its own directory with a SKILL.md file containing the instructions and metadata that Claude uses. Browse through these examples to get inspiration for your own skills or to understand different patterns and approaches.
The example skills in this repo are open source (Apache 2.0). We've also included the document creation & editing skills that power Claude's document capabilities under the hood in the document-skills/ folder. These are source-available, not open source, but we wanted to share these with developers as a reference for more complex skills that are actively used in a production AI application.
You can register this repository as a Claude Code Plugin marketplace by running the following command in Claude Code:
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
Then, to install a specific set of skills:
Browse and install pluginsanthropic-agent-skillsdocument-skills or example-skillsInstall nowAlternatively, directly install either Plugin via:
/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills
/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills
After installing the plugin, you can use the skill by just mentioning it. For instance, if you install the document-skills plugin from the marketplace, you can ask Claude Code to do something like: "Use the PDF skill to extract the form fields from path/to/some-file.pdf"
These example skills are all already available to paid plans in Claude.ai.
To use any skill from this repository or upload custom skills, follow the instructions in Using skills in Claude.
You can use Anthropic's pre-built skills, and upload custom skills, via the Claude API. See the Skills API Quickstart for more.
Skills are simple to create - just a folder with a SKILL.md file containing YAML frontmatter and instructions. You can use the template-skill in this repository as a starting point:
---
name: my-skill-name
description: A clear description of what this skill does and when to use it
---
# My Skill Name
[Add your instructions here that Claude will follow when this skill is active]
## Examples
- Example usage 1
- Example usage 2
## Guidelines
- Guideline 1
- Guideline 2
The frontmatter requires only two fields:
name - A unique identifier for your skill (lowercase, hyphens for spaces)description - A complete description of what the skill does and when to use itThe markdown content below contains the instructions, examples, and guidelines that Claude will follow. For more details, see How to create custom skills.