Claude Code

Manage every Claude Code Skill in one place

Claude Code loads Agent Skills from ~/.claude/skills. That works until you have a second agent, a second machine, or a Skill you want in some projects but not others — then you are maintaining copies. This page shows the real directories, the manual install, and what a Skills manager changes.

Download free Skip to the manual install

Last reviewed: 2026-08-23

Personal Skills directory: ~/.claude/skills
Project Skills directory: <project>/.claude/skills
One library, many tools: 32 tools supported

Directories

Where Claude Code reads Skills from

Claude Code discovers Skills on the filesystem, not through a registry. A Skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file at its root; the folder name is the Skill name. There are two locations, and they are not interchangeable.

Personal — ~/.claude/skills

Available in every project on this machine. This is where a Skill goes when you want it everywhere: a code-review checklist, your writing style, a deploy runbook.

Project — <project>/.claude/skills

Available only inside that repository, and committable, so the whole team gets it on clone. This is where a Skill goes when it encodes something about this codebase specifically.

Both locations, and what a single Skill looks like inside them

~/.claude/skills/                  # personal — every project on this machine└── code-review/    ├── SKILL.md                   # required: name, description, instructions    └── reference/checklist.md     # optional: anything the Skill loads my-app/.claude/skills/             # project — only inside my-app└── deploy-runbook/    └── SKILL.md

Claude Code is one of 7 supported tools with verified project-level Skill support. Most of the rest read only a personal directory, which is why a Skill that lives in a project folder is not automatically portable to another agent.

Manual install

Install a Claude Code Skill by hand

No tool is required for this. Four steps, and it is worth doing once — knowing what the manager writes to disk is the difference between trusting it and hoping.

01
Create the directory
It does not exist on a fresh install. Claude Code reads it if it is there and ignores it if it is not, so creating it is safe.
Create the personal Skills directory
```
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
```
02
Put the Skill folder inside it
Copy or clone the folder so that SKILL.md sits directly at its root — not one level deeper. A repository containing several Skills has one folder per Skill; move the folders, not the repository.
A Skill from a repository that keeps several under skills/
```
git clone https://github.com/some/skill-pack.git /tmp/skill-packcp -R /tmp/skill-pack/skills/code-review ~/.claude/skills/
```
Read SKILL.md before you enable it
A Skill is instructions your agent will follow with your credentials and your filesystem. Read what it tells the agent to do — especially any shell commands, network calls, or paths outside the project.
04
Verify Claude Code sees it
Check the filesystem first, then ask the agent. If ls shows the folder and Claude Code does not mention the Skill, the problem is almost always SKILL.md — a missing name or description field, or the file one directory too deep.
Confirm on disk, then confirm in the session
```
ls ~/.claude/skills# code-review # then, in Claude Code:# "which Skills can you see?"
```

Where copying stops working

Nothing above is wrong, and for one Skill in one tool it is the right amount of effort. It stops scaling at a specific point: the second directory.

A second agent means a second copy. Codex reads ~/.codex/skills, Cursor reads ~/.cursor/skills. The same Skill now exists twice, and the next edit lands in one of them.
You cannot tell which copy is current. Two SKILL.md files with the same name and different contents look identical from the outside, and neither directory records where it came from.
Turning a Skill off means deleting it. There is no per-tool switch, so the only way to stop Claude Code from loading a Skill is to remove the folder — and then you have to find it again.
Nothing reviews what you pasted. Community Skills arrive as prose that an agent will act on. Reading each one carefully is the correct answer and also the one people skip at Skill number nine.

One source

The same Skill in two tools, still one file

A Skills manager does not copy the Skill into each tool. It keeps one folder in ~/.skills-manager/skills and writes a link into the directory each tool already scans. Claude Code sees a normal folder at a normal path; so does every other tool. There is still exactly one SKILL.md.

Real output — one Skill enabled for both Claude Code and Codex

$ ls -l ~/.claude/skills/animate ~/.codex/skills/animate lrwxr-xr-x  ~/.claude/skills/animate -> ~/.skills-manager/skills/animatelrwxr-xr-x  ~/.codex/skills/animate  -> ~/.skills-manager/skills/animate

Check it yourself

This is the one claim on this page you should not take on trust, and it takes one command. Follow both links to their target and compare — if the two resolved paths are the same string, there is one file, and editing it changes what both agents read.

Resolve both links to their target

readlink ~/.claude/skills/animatereadlink ~/.codex/skills/animate# both print the same path in ~/.skills-manager/skills

Skills Manager

What the app adds on top of the directory

Skills Manager is a free, open-source desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux. It does not replace Claude Code or wrap it — it manages the folder Claude Code already reads.

Skills Manager library view listing Agent Skills with per-tool toggles for Claude Code and other detected tools

Import what you already have

On first run the app scans the Skills directories of every tool it detects, including ~/.claude/skills, and lets you pick which ones to move into the central library. Duplicates of the same Skill across tools collapse into one entry. You do not restructure anything by hand to get started.

Enable and disable per tool

A toggle per tool, per Skill. Turning it on writes the link into that tool’s directory; turning it off removes the link only. The source folder in the library is never modified and never deleted, so switching a Skill off is not a decision you have to be brave about.

Edit once, and every tool has it

Because each tool points at the same file, an edit in the library is immediately what Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and the rest read. There is no sync step to remember and no copy to fall behind.

Scan before you trust

36 static rules across destructive commands, network calls, privilege escalation and hidden payloads run locally against a Skill before you enable it. The scan is deterministic and offline — the Skill text is not uploaded anywhere.

Compatibility

Claude Code in the compatibility matrix

The row below is generated from the same table the app ships, so it cannot drift from what the desktop app actually writes.

Field	Value
Tool	Claude Code
Personal Skills directory	`~/.claude/skills`
Project Skills directory	`<project>/.claude/skills`
Detected by	`claude`
Connection method	Symlink on macOS and Linux, junction on Windows

See all 32 tools and their paths

Troubleshooting

When the Skill does not show up

Four failures account for nearly all of them. Each has a specific cause, and in three of the four cases the obvious fix is the wrong one.

Windows: “a required privilege is not held by the client”

Cause: Creating a directory symlink on Windows needs Developer Mode or an elevated process. Skills Manager does not require either — it falls back from symlink to a directory junction (mklink /J), which a standard account can create, and if junctions are blocked too it makes a copy and records the source path in .skills-manager-source.json so the copy stays traceable and can still be switched off from the app.
Fix: Nothing. All three strategies work on a standard, non-elevated account. Running as Administrator only changes which of the three is used, and it is not the one that matters.

macOS: “Skills Manager cannot be opened because Apple cannot check it”

Cause: The release builds are not notarized, so Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. This is about the installer, not about Skills.
Fix: Right-click the app in Applications and choose Open, then confirm once. If it still refuses, clear the quarantine attribute: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Skills Manager.app". Build from source instead if you would rather not run an unnotarized binary — the repository is MIT and the build is a standard Tauri build.

Claude Code does not list a Skill that is definitely in the folder

Cause: Almost always SKILL.md: it is missing a name or description in the front matter, or it sits one level too deep because a repository was copied instead of the Skill folder inside it.
Fix: Confirm the layout is ~/.claude/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md with nothing between, and that the front matter has both name and description. Then start a fresh session — a session that was already open when you added the folder is not the test.

A Skill works in Claude Code but not in another tool

Cause: Two possibilities. Either that tool does not follow links — iFlow is the one case in the matrix, so Skills Manager copies for it instead of linking. Or the Skill lives in a project directory: <project>/.claude/skills is read by Claude Code and ignored by most other agents.
Fix: For iFlow, nothing — copy mode is automatic and the toggle behaves the same. For the project case, move the Skill into the library so it can be enabled per tool, and keep the project directory for Skills that are genuinely specific to that repository.

FAQ

Claude Code Skills questions

What is the difference between personal and project Skills in Claude Code?

A Skill in ~/.claude/skills is personal: it is available in every project on that machine and it is not part of any repository. A Skill in <project>/.claude/skills belongs to that repository: it is available only inside it, and it can be committed so everyone who clones the repository gets it. Use the personal directory for how you work, and the project directory for facts about that codebase.

Do I need a Skills manager to use Claude Code Skills?

No. Copying a folder into ~/.claude/skills is a complete install, and for a handful of Skills in one tool it is enough. A Skills manager becomes worth it at the second directory: once the same Skill has to exist in ~/.claude/skills and ~/.codex/skills, you are maintaining copies that drift, and there is no per-tool way to switch one off short of deleting it.

Why does Claude Code not see a Skill I just added?

Check the layout before anything else. The path has to be ~/.claude/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md with no directory in between — copying a whole repository instead of the Skill folder inside it puts SKILL.md one level too deep, which is the most common cause. The second most common is front matter missing a name or description. Then start a fresh Claude Code session; a session that was already open when you added the folder is not a valid test.

Can I commit Claude Code Skills to a Git repository?

Yes, for project Skills: <project>/.claude/skills is inside the repository, so committing it ships the Skill with the code. Personal Skills in ~/.claude/skills are outside any repository and are not committed. If a Skill is useful across your own projects but you also want it version-controlled, keep it in a library and connect it to each tool by link rather than copying it into several repositories.

How do I move Skills that are already in ~/.claude/skills into a library?

Skills Manager scans the Skills directories of every tool it detects on first run, including ~/.claude/skills, and shows the Skills it found with checkboxes so you choose what to bring in. Selected Skills move into the central library at ~/.skills-manager/skills, and copies of the same Skill found in several tools collapse into one entry. Detection itself is read-only — nothing is written until you import or enable something.

Can I enable a Skill for Claude Code but not for my other tools?

Yes. Each Skill has an independent toggle per detected tool, so a Skill can be live in Claude Code and absent from Cursor at the same time. Turning it on writes the link into that tool’s Skills directory and turning it off removes the link only — the Skill folder in the library is not modified and not deleted, so switching a Skill off costs nothing to undo.

Download

One Skill library for Claude Code and every other agent

Free and open source. macOS, Windows and Linux. No account needed to manage Skills locally, and no telemetry in the app.

Download free Read the source on GitHub

MIT licensed. Detection is read-only until you enable a Skill.