Use skills in Claude (original) (raw)

Skills extend Claude's capabilities by giving it access to specialized knowledge and workflows. This guide shows you how to enable, discover, and use skills in Claude.

Prerequisites

For Enterprise plans: Owners must first enable both Code execution and file creation and Skills in Organization settings > Skills. Owners can also upload skills to provision them organization-wide—these skills automatically appear for all users. Once skills are enabled at the organization level, individual members can toggle on example skills, access provisioned skills, and upload their own personal skills in Customize > Skills.

For Team plans: This feature is enabled by default at the organization level. Once enabled, individual members can toggle on example skills and upload their own in Customize > Skills.

For Max, Pro, and Free plans: You can enable example skills and upload your own in Customize > Skills.

How to enable skills

Provision skills organization-wide

Owners of Team and Enterprise organizations can provision skills for all users. These skills appear in your individual Skills list with a team indicator—you can toggle them on or off based on your preferences. For information on provisioning skills for your organization, see Provision and manage skills for your organization.

Use Anthropic skills

Anthropic provides several built-in skills that are available to all users, including:

With Code execution and file creation on, Claude will automatically use these tools when relevant. You don't need to explicitly invoke them—Claude determines when each skill is needed based on your request.

For example, if you ask Claude to "Create a PowerPoint presentation about Q3 results," Claude will automatically use the PowerPoint skill if the capability is enabled.

Add and use custom skills

You can also create and upload your own skills to teach Claude your specific workflows:

On Team and Enterprise plans, you can share skills you've created with specific colleagues or with your entire organization. Skill sharing works in both chat and Cowork.

To share a skill:

Shared skills are view-only. Recipients can enable and use the skill, but they can't edit the contents. If you update the skill later, recipients automatically get the updated version.

Use skills shared with you

On Team and Enterprise plans, your skills list in Customize > Skills is organized into three sections:

Enable a skill shared with you directly

You can toggle the skill off again at any time, or delete it from your list entirely if you don't want it.

Install a skill from your organization's directory

Skills you install from the directory can be toggled off, which removes them from your sidebar. They remain in the directory so you can re-enable them later. For more on browsing the directory, see Browse skills, connectors, and plugins in one directory.

Use skills in Microsoft 365 add-ins

Skills you've enabled in your Claude settings are also available in the Claude for Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook add-ins. Claude applies relevant skills automatically while you work—you don't need to invoke them separately.

How triggering works in the add-ins:

Claude adapts skills to the surface it’s in. A research skill may produce a Word document in Cowork, but detailed data breakdowns in Excel. Some skills may work better on one surface than others. If you let Claude work across apps, Claude can orchestrate another app to apply the skill. If you build a skill with a specific Excel or PowerPoint template, Claude for Excel and Powerpoint can load that template exactly into the current open file.

Manage your skills

View your skills

Enable/disable your skills

Toggle any skill on or off using the switch next to it. Disabled skills won't be available to Claude.

Delete custom skills

To remove a custom skill you've uploaded:

If you change your mind, you can add the skill again by re-uploading the file.

Privacy and security details

For Team and Enterprise plans, organization owners can provision skills for all users through organization settings, and individuals can share skills with colleagues or organization-wide if an owner has enabled sharing. On all other plans, each person uploads skills to their own account.

Note that skills may include, or instruct Claude to install, third-party packages and software for Claude to use when completing a task. See our guidance on Claude's container environment for details on Claude's container environment and the API documentation for API's container environment.

What are the primary risks of using skills?

The most significant risks are prompt injection, which allows Claude to be manipulated to execute unintended actions, and data exfiltration, caused by malicious package code or prompt-injected data leaks. We’ve implemented several mitigations to these risks. Refer to our security considerations for code execution for more information.

When installing a skill from a less-trusted source—including one shared by a colleague—review it before enabling. Start by reading the contents of the files bundled in the skill to understand what it does, paying particular attention to code dependencies and bundled resources like images or scripts. Similarly, pay attention to instructions or code within the skill that instruct Claude to connect to potentially untrusted external network sources.

Troubleshooting

Skills section not visible

Claude isn’t using a skill

Upload errors

Common reasons for upload failures:

Skills greyed out

If skills appear greyed out, code execution may be disabled at the organization level (for Team and Enterprise plans) or individually. Check with your organization's Owner (Team, Enterprise) or make sure to enable code execution in Settings > Capabilities (Free, Pro, Max).

Skill sharing for Team and Enterprise plans is off by default. An organization owner must enable peer-to-peer or peer-to-org sharing before you can share skills. Contact your organization owner if you'd like sharing enabled.

Best practices

Start simple. Begin with Anthropic's pre-built skills to understand how they work before creating custom skills.

Be specific. Write clear descriptions when writing custom skills. A specific description tells Claude when to invoke your skill.

Test your skills. After uploading a custom skill, test it with a few different prompts to ensure it works as expected.

Organize by purpose. Create separate skills for different purposes rather than a single skill that’s meant to do everything.

Learn more about using skills

Create and edit files with Claude What are skills?How to create custom skills Provision and manage skills for your organization Browse skills, connectors, and plugins in one directory