Tutorial
How to Install Claude Skills (Personal, Project, and Plugin)
Three install methods for SKILL.md agent skills: ~/.claude/skills for you, .claude/skills for the repo, and plugins for a bundle. Includes Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex paths.
· 8 min read
Installing an agent skill is copying a folder to a location the agent already watches. There is no npm publish step for a SKILL.md. Pick the scope first, then the path.
Choose a scope
Personal skills follow you across repos. Project skills travel with git. Plugins bundle many skills and must be enabled per project. If a skill should be the team default, it belongs in the repo.
Claude Code and Claude Desktop
Copy the skill folder so SKILL.md sits at ~/.claude/skills/<slug>/SKILL.md or .claude/skills/<slug>/SKILL.md. Restart the session. Ask for the task using words from the skill description.
Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot
Compatible agents look for the same SKILL.md layout, sometimes under .agents/skills or a vendor directory. If an OpxSkills model page marks a skill inferred rather than verified, treat the path as a starting point and confirm in that tool’s docs.
Verify the install
A successful install is not “the folder exists”. It is “a new session loads the skill when you ask for the job”. If that fails, do not add more files — fix the path or the description.
Related reading
Skills cited in this guide
coding
Skill Creator
Scaffold a new AI agent skill from a plain-language job description: folder, SKILL.md frontmatter, trigger description, and a first draft of the instructions.
productivity
PDF Skill
Read, fill, extract, and generate PDF documents from an agent session — forms, reports, and print-ready files rather than markdown-only output.
coding
MCP Builder
Design and implement Model Context Protocol servers so an agent can call external tools with typed schemas instead of stuffing API docs into a skill.