There is no single Claude skills marketplace: in Claude Code, skills ship inside plugins that you install from plugin marketplaces, such as Anthropic’s official claude-plugins-official or the anthropics/skills repository, and you browse them with /plugin or on Claude Marketplace. In the Claude apps, you turn skills on and upload your own under Customize > Skills.

Applies to: Claude Code 2.1.289 (changelog), Claude Code and Claude Help Center docs as of October 4, 2026. Last checked: 2026-10-04.

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What counts as a marketplace for Claude skills?

Anthropic’s docs define a marketplace as “a catalog of plugins that a repository defines in its .claude-plugin/marketplace.json file” (Anthropic’s marketplaces). A plugin can carry skills, agents, hooks and MCP servers; installing one adds those to Claude Code (Install and manage plugins). Skills from a plugin run as /plugin-name:skill-name, as our Claude Code skills guide explains.

So “finding a skill” in Claude Code means finding the plugin that bundles it and the marketplace that lists that plugin. The Claude apps (claude.ai, Cowork) use a separate catalog, Anthropic’s directory, covered further down.

Anthropic’s marketplaces

Anthropic publishes three general-purpose marketplaces, plus topic-specific ones such as anthropics/skills and anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins (source):

Marketplace Repository Name after @ What’s in it How you get it
Official anthropics/claude-plugins-official claude-plugins-official Plugins Anthropic maintains, plus plugins from partners and other authors Added automatically the first time you start an interactive terminal session
Community anthropics/claude-plugins-community claude-community Third-party plugins their authors submitted to Anthropic /plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-community
Demo anthropics/claude-code claude-code-plugins A small set of example plugins /plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-code
Agent skills anthropics/skills anthropic-agent-skills The document-skills and example-skills plugins /plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills

The docs note that the demo marketplace “isn’t the official marketplace” and that most of its plugins, such as code-review and commit-commands, are also in claude-plugins-official; install those from the official one so you don’t end up with two copies.

From the same docs page:

  • In Claude Code: run /plugin. The Discover tab lists plugins from every marketplace you have added, and you can type to search.
  • By name: /plugin install <name> looks the name up in your marketplaces and opens its details; nothing installs until you pick a scope.
  • On the web: Claude Marketplace searches the full catalog, shows install counts and marks some plugins Anthropic verified. Its Claude Code button copies the shell form of the install command, claude plugin install <name>@claude-plugins-official.
  • On GitHub: open .claude-plugin/marketplace.json in the marketplace repository. That file is the catalog.

For a curated list of skills with their sources, install commands and licenses, see our skills directory.

How to install skills from a marketplace

The anthropics/skills README gives these commands to run inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills

/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills
/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills

document-skills holds the PDF, DOCX, XLSX and PPTX skills; example-skills holds examples such as Skill Creator and MCP Builder. After installing, the README says you can name a skill in a request, for example “Use the PDF skill to extract the form fields from path/to/some-file.pdf”.

In a session, /plugin install opens the plugin’s details instead of installing at once. The pane lists what the plugin will add and, for plugins in the official marketplace, its context cost. You then choose a scope (install a plugin):

Scope Who gets it Settings file
User You, in every project on this machine ~/.claude/settings.json
Project Everyone who works in this repository .claude/settings.json (committed)
Local You, in this repository only .claude/settings.local.json

From your shell, without opening a session (install from your shell):

claude plugin install formatter@your-org --scope project

Since v2.1.275 you can add a marketplace and install from it in one step:

/plugin install deploy-helper --marketplace your-org/plugins

A marketplace source can be a GitHub owner/repo (add #ref to pin a branch or tag), a full git URL on any host, a local path starting with ./ or ../, or an https:// URL to a hosted marketplace.json (add a marketplace).

Skills in the Claude apps

On claude.ai the Help Center describes a different flow (Use skills in Claude):

  • Skills are available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans and require code execution. On Free, Pro and Max, turn on Code execution and file creation under Settings > Capabilities, then go to Customize > Skills.
  • Anthropic’s built-in skills cover Excel, Word, PowerPoint and PDF files, and Claude uses them automatically when relevant.
  • To add your own, package the skill folder as a ZIP, open Customize > Skills, click +, then + Create skill and Upload a skill. Uploaded skills are private to your account.
  • On Team and Enterprise, you can share a skill with people, groups or the whole organization; org-wide skills go to the organization’s directory, where members install them.

Anthropic’s directory on claude.ai is separate from the Claude Code marketplaces. A plugin you add there reaches Claude Code through account sync and shows up as <name>@synced (plugins from your claude.ai account). Plugin authors submit to the directory from claude.ai/directory/manage on a paid plan; the docs say claude-plugins-official doesn’t take submissions through that portal (Publish a plugin).

Third-party marketplaces and trust

Many plugins live in their authors’ own marketplaces, usually a GitHub repository with .claude-plugin/marketplace.json at its root. Add one with /plugin marketplace add <owner>/<repo>, then install with @<marketplace-name>, the name field Claude Code prints after adding it (third-party marketplaces).

Warning

Anthropic’s docs say “A Claude Code plugin you install can execute arbitrary code on your machine with your user privileges,” and “Anthropic doesn’t review third-party marketplaces.” Hooks and MCP server processes from a plugin run outside the sandbox, and the marketplace’s name tells you “who publishes the catalog, not what each plugin in it does” (Plugin security and trust).

What the same page recommends before you install:

  • Run claude plugin marketplace list to see where each marketplace came from.
  • Read the Will install section in the /plugin details pane.
  • Read the plugin’s hooks/hooks.json, .mcp.json and every file in bin/.
  • Run claude --plugin-dir <plugin directory> plugin details <plugin name> on a clone to print its component inventory.

Claude Code accepts the official and community marketplace names only for marketplaces sourced from github.com/anthropics/ repositories, so a third-party catalog can’t pose as Anthropic’s. Auto-update is on by default for claude-plugins-official and off for community and third-party marketplaces (keep plugins updated).