Agent Skills from Anthropic: what the open repo gives you

Anthropic's public repository holds its implementation of skills for Claude. A skill is a folder of instructions, scripts and resources that Claude loads when a task needs them.

The point is repeatability. A skill teaches Claude to do a specific job the same way each time, from branded documents to data analysis with your own workflows. Each one sits in its own folder with a SKILL.md file holding the instructions and metadata Claude reads.

Creating one is small work: a folder plus a SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter. Only two fields are required, a lowercase hyphenated name and a description of what the skill does and when to use it.

Many skills in the repo are open source under Apache 2.0. That includes the document skills behind Claude's own document handling, in the docx, pdf, pptx and xlsx subfolders.

Anthropic says it shared those as a reference for developers building more complex skills that run in a production AI application. The rest of the repo spans creative work, technical tasks like testing web apps and MCP server generation, and enterprise workflows.

One honest limit: Anthropic labels the skills as demonstration and educational material. What Claude actually does may differ from what the examples show, so the repo asks you to test thoroughly in your own environment before relying on any skill for critical work.

You can register the repository as a plugin marketplace inside Claude Code with a single command. From there you browse and install plugins, picking either document-skills or example-skills.

You can also install a plugin directly by name. Once it is in, you trigger a skill just by mentioning it in your request, for example asking Claude Code to use the PDF skill on a specific file.

On Claude.ai the example skills are already available on paid plans, and custom skills can be uploaded. Through the API you can use Anthropic's pre-built skills or upload your own.

The repository is organized so you can learn by example rather than by spec. The skills folder groups examples by area, a spec folder holds the Agent Skills specification, and a template folder gives you a starting point.

Anthropic frames the browsing as inspiration: read a few skills to see the patterns, then build your own. If you want the formal standard rather than Anthropic's implementation, the repo points elsewhere for that.