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Using distilled skills in Claude Desktop

A distilled SKILL.md is a generic operating guide ("how to do task X on site Y"), written as durable UI landmarks rather than brittle selectors. It can be read as guidance, or executed step-by-step when a browser-control MCP is configured. Two things to set up.

1. Install the skill (manual upload — Desktop has no local skills folder)

Unlike Claude Code (which auto-reads ~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md), the Claude Desktop app does not watch a local folder. Skills must be uploaded:

  1. In the control panel → Trajectories, click Desktop .zip to download <name>.zip (the skill packaged for upload).
  2. Open Claude Desktop → Settings → Skills (a.k.a. Customize → Skills).
  3. Create skill / upload and select the .zip.

Claude Code users get this automatically: the installer also writes ~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md (or your chosen project path), which Claude Code discovers with zero steps.

2. Give Claude Desktop a browser (Playwright MCP)

A skill grants no tools by itself — it is injected instructions. For Claude Desktop to really click/type/navigate, add the Playwright MCP server. The control panel → Browser execution → Configure Playwright MCP automatically does this for you (it backs up your existing config first).

Manual equivalent — edit claude_desktop_config.json:

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "playwright": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@playwright/mcp@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop after changing the config. Then a distilled skill's steps are actually executed in a real browser. Without an MCP browser, the skill is still useful — Claude reads it as guidance.