How to Install Claude Skills
There's no installer to fight. A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md, and installation is putting that folder in the right place. The failures come from where and how deep.
The two locations
| Scope | Path | Who sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Project | .claude/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md | Anyone with the repo |
| User (global) | ~/.claude/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md | You, in every project |
On Windows, ~ is C:\Users\<you>. If both exist with the same name, the project one wins.
Step by step
- Unzip or clone the skill somewhere temporary.
- Find
SKILL.md. It must be at the root of the skill folder. - Move the folder into
.claude/skills/or~/.claude/skills/. - Check the depth:
.claude/skills/og-image/SKILL.md✅ —.claude/skills/og-image/og-image/SKILL.md❌. - Restart Claude Code. Skills are discovered at session start.
- Verify: ask "list your skills" or "what skills do you have access to?".
Verify it actually triggers
Listing proves discovery, not activation. Trigger it with a real task:
"Make a 1200×630 OG image for this article, using the og-image skill."
Naming the skill is fine for a test; in daily use, describe the outcome and let the description match.
The four silent failures
1. One folder too deep. The most common. The agent looks for SKILL.md directly inside the skill folder.
2. A vague description. The agent decides whether to load the skill from the description alone. "Helps with design" never matches "make an OG image".
3. Wrong scope. A project skill isn't visible in another repo.
4. No restart. The session read the folder list before you added the file.
Project or global?
Use project for team standards: brand tokens, page templates, review checklists. Use global for personal utilities you want everywhere: OG images, changelogs, commit messages.
Uninstall
Delete the folder. There's no registry and no leftover state. If the skill shipped scripts, also remove anything it wrote outside its folder.
FAQ
Do I need to restart the whole terminal? Restart the agent session; that's enough.
Can I install a skill from a URL? Download the folder and place it manually, or use a CLI that supports one-command install.
Where do other agents look? Cursor, Gemini CLI and Copilot also read .agents/skills; see the agent hubs for exact paths.