Skills: Distribution

Choose a channel

Channel	Audience	How	Updates
Personal folder	You	`~/.claude/skills/<name>/` (Claude Code + Cursor) or `~/.cursor/skills/<name>/`	Edit in place
Project repo	Everyone who clones the repo	Commit `.claude/skills/<name>/`, `.cursor/skills/<name>/`, or `.agents/skills/<name>/`	Through PRs
Shared skills repo	Team / org	A dedicated git repo; people clone or symlink it into their personal folder	`git pull`
Plugin	Team / org / public	Package the skills (plus optional agents, MCP config, and hooks) as a Claude Code plugin or Cursor plugin, and publish to a marketplace	Plugin versioning
Claude.ai / Desktop	Individuals or org members on Claude apps	ZIP the skill folder (with the folder at the root of the ZIP) → Settings → Capabilities → Upload	Re-upload
Claude API	Your applications	Upload via the Skills API, then reference it by `skill_id` in Messages API requests that use the code execution tool	Versioned by the API

The folder name equals name
No secrets, personal paths, or machine-specific absolute paths
Dependencies are listed in SKILL.md, or in compatibility in the frontmatter
There’s a version and changelog (for example metadata: { version: "1.2.0" }, plus CHANGELOG.md)
There’s a short README section or announcement with 2–3 example prompts
A license is declared if you share it outside your org (license: in the frontmatter)
npm run qa passes

To support Claude Code, Cursor, and Claude.ai with one source:

Keep the canonical copy in a git repo under skills/<name>/.
Claude Code + Cursor (project): place or symlink it at .claude/skills/<name>/, which both hosts read.
Claude.ai: a small script zips each skills/<name>/ folder for upload.
Use only portable frontmatter (name, description, license, metadata, disable-model-invocation) unless you’ve checked the matrix.
Hosted environments (the API and Claude.ai) may not allow runtime package installs, so scripts there should use only pre-installed libraries.

To share one skill between hosts, you can use a directory junction instead of copying: New-Item -ItemType Junction -Path "$HOME\.cursor\skills\my-skill" -Target "C:\Projects\skills-repo\skills\my-skill" Since Cursor already reads ~/.claude/skills, this is usually unnecessary.
Inside skills, keep paths forward-slashed.

Use semantic versioning: major when the output format or behaviour changes incompatibly, minor for new capabilities, patch for wording fixes.
Re-run the eval set before bumping the version.
Record notable changes in DECISIONS.md or the skill’s CHANGELOG.md.
Deprecate a skill by adding a line at the top of its body pointing to the replacement, then remove it one release later.