What are Claude skills and plugins? A practical guide

Getting more out of Claude with skills and plugins

Out of the box, Claude is a capable general-purpose assistant. But what are Claude skills and what are Claude plugins? They are add-ons that take it further. Skills extend Claude's capabilities by giving it access to specialized knowledge and workflows it would not otherwise have. Plugins take that a step further by bundling skills, connectors, and sub-agents together into a role-specific setup you can install in seconds.

The difference, all plugins contain skills, but not all skills are part of a plugin.

For example, you could install a standalone Excel skill that gives Claude the ability to build well-structured spreadsheets with proper formatting and formulas. That skill exists on its own and you can use it for anything. Now take that same Excel skill and put it inside the Finance plugin. The plugin still includes it, but it also bundles in connectors to data warehouses like Snowflake, Databricks, and BigQuery so Claude can pull financial data directly, a Slack connector so it can post updates to your team, and Microsoft 365 integration — all pre-configured alongside skills specifically built for journal entries, account reconciliation, and financial reporting. Same skill, much bigger package.

This guide explains how both work, what they can do for you, and when to use each one.

What are Claude skills?

A skill extends Claude's capabilities by giving it access to specialized knowledge, tools, or workflows. Anthropic describes them simply as: skills give Claude access to specialized knowledge and workflows it would not otherwise have. A built-in skill might add the ability to create a properly formatted Excel file, while a custom skill might teach Claude your company's specific process for writing client proposals.

Claude can automatically identify and load relevant skills based on what you are working on, which means you often do not need to invoke them manually. When you are working on a spreadsheet task and the Excel skill is enabled, Claude will apply it without you having to ask.

Built-in skills you already have

Anthropic ships Claude with several built-in skills out of the box. If you have code execution enabled in your settings, these are already available to you:

• Excel: creates and manipulates spreadsheets with advanced formatting and formulas
• Word: generates professionally formatted Word documents with proper structure
• PowerPoint: builds presentation decks from your instructions or source content
• PDF: creates and processes PDF files

These are not just "Claude knows how to make spreadsheets." They are structured skills with specific knowledge about formatting, layout, and best practices built in. Claude automatically detects when one is relevant and applies it without you having to ask.

Creating your own custom skills

Custom skills are where things get genuinely useful. You can write a skill for anything you do repeatedly with Claude. Here are some examples of what people build:

• A writing style skill that captures your voice, tone preferences, and rules (no em dashes, short paragraphs, active voice only)
• A weekly report skill that knows your company's report structure, what data to pull, and how to format the output
• A client communication skill that loads context about a specific client, their preferences, and your relationship history
• A research skill that defines a specific methodology for how Claude should gather and structure information

To create a custom skill, you create a folder with a SKILL.md file inside it. The file starts with a short header (the skill's name and a one-line description), followed by the instructions you want Claude to follow. Once it is ready, you zip the folder and upload it via Customize > Skills in Claude's settings, then toggle it on.

See this video from Anthropic for more on creating skills:

If you are using Claude Code, you can also use the built-in /skill-creator command, which walks you through the process interactively and helps you write and test the skill before saving it.

When to use a skill instead of just typing the prompt

If you are going to use the same instructions more than a couple of times, a skill is worth building. The time you spend writing it pays off quickly.

A few situations where skills make a clear difference:

• You have a writing or formatting style that takes more than a sentence to explain
• You run the same type of task weekly or monthly (reports, reviews, summaries)
• You work with a specific client or project that has a lot of context Claude would otherwise need re-explained
• You want consistent output across sessions without having to re-prompt for it

If it is a one-off task with no real context to save, just type the prompt. Skills are for anything you plan to repeat.

What are Claude plugins?

If skills are individual saved instructions, plugins are full toolkits. A plugin bundles together multiple skills, connectors to external services, and sometimes sub-agents (smaller specialized AI helpers that Claude can call on) into a single installable package designed for a specific role or workflow.

Plugins launched in Claude Cowork on January 30, 2026. Anthropic open-sourced 11 plugins that their own team uses internally, and the library has grown quickly since. You can browse and install them directly inside Cowork without any technical setup required from the Customize tab > Browse Plugins. You should see a list of plugins offered by Anthropic and partners.

What plugins are available

When you install a plugin, it adds a set of skills specific to that role which you can invoke with the / command during any Cowork session. Here is what Anthropic has released from their own internal toolkit:

• Sales: Handles prospect research, call prep, pipeline reviews, competitive battlecard creation, and outreach drafting. Connects to tools like HubSpot, Clay, and ZoomInfo so Claude can pull live data rather than working from what you paste in.

• Marketing: Drafts content, plans campaigns, enforces brand voice, and reports on channel performance. Connects to tools like Canva, HubSpot, and Ahrefs so Claude can pull from your actual brand assets and campaign data.

• Finance: Prepares journal entries, reconciles accounts, generates financial statements, analyzes variances, and supports audit preparation. Built for accounting teams running month-end or quarter-end close workflows.

• Legal: Reviews contracts, triages NDAs, navigates compliance questions, assesses risk, and drafts templated responses. Useful for legal teams handling a high volume of routine document review.

• Product management: Writes specs, plans roadmaps, synthesizes user research, and tracks the competitive landscape. Connects to tools like Linear, Figma, Amplitude, and Jira so Claude can work directly with your existing product workflow.

• Customer support: Triages tickets, drafts responses, packages escalations, and converts resolved issues into knowledge base articles automatically. Connects to platforms like Intercom and HubSpot.

• Data: Writes SQL queries, runs statistical analysis, builds dashboards, and validates findings before sharing. Connects to data warehouses like Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks.

• Productivity: Manages tasks, calendars, and daily workflows. Connects to tools like Notion, Asana, Jira, Slack, and Microsoft 365, with the goal of reducing the friction of switching between them constantly.

• Enterprise search: Runs a single unified search across email, chat, documents, and wikis at once. Useful when you know something exists somewhere in your company's tools but cannot remember where.

• Plugin Create: A meta-plugin that walks you through building or customizing your own plugin from scratch, starting from Anthropic's templates. This is the one to install if you want to build something specific to your team's tools or workflow.

In February 2026, Anthropic added enterprise features including private plugin marketplaces (so companies can distribute internal plugins to their teams), twelve new external connectors, and a built-in Plugin Create tool that helps you build a custom plugin from scratch or start from an existing template.

Are plugins available in Claude Code?

Plugins are a Cowork-specific feature and require a paid Cowork plan (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise). Claude Code has its own version of extensibility through custom slash commands and settings, but the plugin marketplace and install flow described above is specific to Cowork.

Skills, however, are cross-platform. A skill you build works in both Cowork and Claude Code.

Skills vs plugins: what is the difference?

The distinction is mostly about scope and who builds it.

In practice, many people use both. You might install a marketing plugin that gives you a solid foundation of marketing-specific skills, and then add your own custom skill on top of it that captures your specific brand voice and preferences.

Is there any similarity between skills and plugins and connectors?

Yes, and the terminology can get confusing. Here is a quick breakdown of all three:

Skills save instructions and workflows for Claude to follow.

Connectors connect Claude to external services like Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, or DocuSign so it can read from and take action in those tools. Connectors are separate from skills but can be bundled inside plugins.

Plugins bundle all of the above together. A plugin for a sales role, for example, might include skills for proposal writing, a connector to your CRM, and a sub-agent for competitive research, all installed in one go.

A note on security

Before installing a skill or plugin from a source you do not know well, it is worth auditing what is inside it. Anthropic flags two main risks: prompt injection (malicious instructions hidden in the package that change Claude's behavior) and data exfiltration through code bundled inside the skill. The sandboxed environment Claude runs in provides some protection, but the official guidance is to only install skills and plugins from sources you trust.

Getting started

If you are new to all of this, the easiest place to start is with the built-in skills. Make sure code execution is turned on in your Claude settings (Settings > Capabilities > Code execution and file creation), then go to Customize > Skills to see what is already available.

Browse the plugin library via Customize > Browse plugins and look for a plugin that matches your role. Installing one takes about thirty seconds and immediately gives you a set of ready-to-use skills for your kind of work.

When you are ready to go further, start with a simple custom skill. Think of one recurring task where you always give Claude the same context, write that context into a SKILL.md file, and upload it. That is the whole thing. Once you have used it a few times, you will never want to go back to re-explaining it manually.

For a walkthrough on getting Cowork set up in the first place, see our guide to setting up your first AI agent.