Install and manage skills

This guide shows you how to fill a workspace with skills from GitHub: add a repository as a source, install the skills you want from it, and keep them current over time.

The important thing to know before you start: a source repository is untrusted. Its name, description and star count are written by whoever owns it. The only safety signal Control Center trusts is the antivirus scan verdict, which every install passes through before anything reaches disk or an agent prompt. If you want the reasoning, read the agent model’s skills section; this page stays on the doing.

Skills live at Settings → Workspace → Skills (/settings/workspace/skills). They are workspace-scoped: the skills you install here belong to this workspace only.

Add a skill repository

1. Open Settings → Workspace → Skills and switch to the Sources tab.
2. Press Add repository.
3. Paste a GitHub repository URL, e.g. https://github.com/anthropics/skills, and confirm.

The server checks that the repository exists and is visible with its credentials, then adds it to the left rail. There is no curated store in the middle: any GitHub repository works, which also means reputation is yours to judge — a star count is evidence, never a guarantee.

A repository’s skills are the directories that contain a SKILL.md (up to three levels deep, plus the Claude plugin-marketplace layout plugins/<plugin>/skills/<skill>, with dependency and vendor trees skipped). If the grid later says the repository has no skills, that is what it means: no directory in it matches the skill convention.

Inspect a skill before installing

Select a repository in the rail; its skills appear as a grid on the right, with a filter field above it that narrows the catalog by name, description or slug. Click a card to open the detail view. It shows three things:

• The README, rendered as markdown — the skill directory’s README.md, or the SKILL.md body when there is no README.
• The scan preview — the verdict (pass, warn or quarantine), the capabilities the skill’s content declares (runs shell, writes files, network access…) and every finding the scanner recorded.
• The file count — an install writes the skill’s whole directory, not just its SKILL.md.

The preview scans the exact bytes an install would write, so the verdict you see is the verdict the install gets; nothing is re-judged behind your back.

Install a skill

1. Open the skill’s detail view.
2. Read the scan verdict. For a warn or pass verdict, press Install.
3. For a quarantine verdict, install stays disabled until you tick I understand the risk — install anyway. That override is recorded, not assumed.

The install writes the skill’s directory into the workspace, records a pin in skills-lock.json (source repository, path, the commit it came from and a content hash), and the skill becomes available to agents in the workspace. A card marked Name in use means a different skill already owns that name locally — uninstall that one first.

Update skills over time

Cards for installed skills carry badges: Installed, or Update available when the repository has moved past the commit you pinned. Open the detail view and press Update to re-fetch at the new commit. An update passes through the same scan gate as an install — a skill whose new version quarantines is refused and the version you had stays put. The old version’s hash is kept as a rollback reference in the lock.

Uninstall a skill, remove a repository

Uninstall (on an installed skill’s detail view, or delete in the Installed tab) removes the skill’s directory and its lock pin together — an uninstalled skill leaves nothing behind.

Removing a repository from the rail removes only the catalog: skills you installed from it stay installed and still update, because a pin records the repository by name rather than by reference to the source entry. Add the repository back if you want to browse it again.