| title | Skills and the Skills Market |
|---|---|
| nav_title | Skills |
| description | A skill is a ready-made procedure for Claude. What to check before installing one. |
| order | 4 |
A skill is a procedure someone else already worked out. Install it and Claude follows it whenever the matching situation comes up. A "PDF handling" skill, for instance, tells it which library to use, what order to split pages in, and what to do with an encrypted file — so you don't have to explain it every time.
How it differs from an agent: an agent is a worker with its own context and tool scope; a skill is knowledge and procedure that an agent loads. Delegating to an agent is hiring someone; installing a skill is handing them a manual.
Click Skills Market in the sidebar. It aggregates two sources, ClawHub and SkillHub, and loads more as you scroll — there is no "load more" button.
Three filters across the top:
- Source — all sources, ClawHub, or SkillHub.
- Security — see below.
- Install status — all skills, installed, or not installed.
The search box matches names and keywords.
Each card carries a security badge. It reports what the source scanned, not an audit by this app:
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Verified | Publisher is verified and the skill passed the source's security scan |
| Scanned safe | The source's security scan found no risks |
| Not audited | The source provided no security audit data |
| Flagged | The source's scan flagged potential risk |
"Not audited" doesn't mean unsafe — it means nobody checked. "Flagged" means don't install it unless you've read the files and understand exactly what they do.
A skill can bring new tools, scripts, and external dependencies, and once installed Claude may run them. The disclaimer at the top of the market means what it says: these skills come from third-party community sources and this app does not audit their contents.
Recommended:
- Open the Files tab on the detail page and read
SKILL.mdand any accompanying scripts. - If you're unsure, have Claude look first — "check this skill's files for anything suspicious".
- Confirm you actually need it. More skills isn't more capability; every skill costs context.
Install opens a confirmation with the install location, the security note, and a reminder that the skill takes effect in new sessions. Sessions already open won't pick it up — start a new one.
Uninstall lives in the same place and deletes the local files under that skill's directory.
Settings → Skills lists everything available on this machine, grouped by source:
- User — installed by you, in
~/.claude/skills/. - Project — shipped with the repo.
- Plugin — bundled by a plugin.
- Built-in — shipped with the app.
Each entry shows its entry file, file count, and estimated token cost. Open one to switch between doc mode and code mode and read the skill's prose and source files directly.
Besides ~/.claude/skills/, the desktop app also reads ~/.agents/skills/. That's an open standard directory shared with Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and other clients — install once, use it everywhere. Skills from that directory are tagged .agents in the list.
A project's own .agents/skills/ works the same way: it ships with the repo rather than being something you installed.
:::warning A shared directory means skills another client installed also apply here. Scan Settings → Skills occasionally and make sure nothing on the list is a stranger. :::
For how skills are loaded and what the file format is, see Skills internals.