Skills are the fastest way to make Claude Code better at your work: packaged instructions and scripts that load on demand, teaching Claude everything from document generation to disciplined debugging. The ecosystem has exploded — hundreds of thousands of skills now exist — which has replaced the old problem (where do I find skills?) with a new one: which ones are actually worth installing?

This guide covers where to look and how to judge what you find.

The four places skills live

1. The official plugin directory

Anthropic now ships in-product discovery: run /plugin inside Claude Code and browse the Discover screen. Everything there passes Anthropic's security and quality review, making it the safest starting point. Skills often arrive bundled inside plugins alongside related commands and agents.

2. skills.sh

Vercel's open registry indexes an enormous number of skills with install counts, trending charts, and automated security audits. Installation is one command (npx skills add <skill>), and it works across many coding agents, not just Claude Code. The catch: install count is the primary ranking signal, so well-distributed skills dominate and niche gems stay buried.

3. GitHub

Anthropic's own anthropics/skills repository holds the official first-party skills, and community awesome-lists catalog the rest. Browsing GitHub gives you the most context — you can read the actual SKILL.md, check the commit history, and see open issues before installing anything.

4. Curated directories (like this one)

Registries optimize for volume; directories optimize for judgment. Our Skills category lists skills that have been reviewed and link-verified, with install instructions per resource — and the same curation applies across MCP servers, subagents, hooks, and plugins, which raw skill registries don't cover.

How to judge a skill before installing it

Skills are instructions that run with your agent's permissions, so treat installation like adding a dependency:

• Read the SKILL.md. A good skill has a clear trigger description and focused instructions. Vague, sprawling skills degrade Claude's behavior by competing for attention in context.
• Check freshness. Claude Code moves fast. A skill written for last year's feature set may reference commands or behaviors that changed.
• Prefer auditable sources. Official directories run security review; skills.sh publishes automated audit results; a random gist runs nothing. Look for bundled scripts and check what they execute.
• Fewer, better. Every installed skill adds description text Claude must weigh when deciding what to load. A tight set of five skills you actually use outperforms fifty you don't.

A starter set worth considering

If you're setting up fresh, these official skills cover the most common ground and demonstrate what good skills look like:

The last one matters more than it looks: once you understand how skills are structured, the highest-value skill is usually one you write yourself for the workflow you repeat every week.

Beyond skills

Skills are one piece of the configuration stack. If a capability needs live data or external systems, you want an MCP server; if it should trigger automatically at fixed points, that's a hook; if it's a whole methodology, look at plugins. Browse the full directory to see how the pieces fit together.