REPO PACKAGE
anthropics skills
OFFICIAL18skills
10ready to use
LABSCO SUMMARY
The 18 split across the four groups the README itself names: creative and design (algorithmic-art, canvas-design, brand-guidelines, theme-factory), development and technical (mcp-builder, skill-creator, webapp-testing, web-artifacts-builder, slack-gif-creator), enterprise and communication (internal-comms, doc-coauthoring, frontend-design), and four document skills -- docx, pdf, pptx, xlsx -- that Anthropic says are the same code behind Claude's built-in Word, PDF, PowerPoint, and Excel handling. Those four are described as source-available rather than open source; the rest carry an Apache-2.0 license.
This is the set most people point to when they describe what an Agent Skill looks like, and it is worth reading even without installing from it: skill-creator explains how to write a SKILL.md, and template-skill is the blank scaffold Anthropic ships for exactly that purpose.
READ THE FULL ANALYSIS
One of the eighteen is not a working skill. template-skill's description still reads "Replace with description of the skill and when Claude should use it" -- the unedited scaffold text. It counts toward the eighteen because it ships live in the repository, but installing it gets a reader a blank form, not a capability.
Read the disclaimer before you rely on one. Anthropic's own README says these skills "are provided for demonstration and educational purposes only" and that Claude's actual behavior may differ from what a given skill shows -- the opposite of a promise that installing one guarantees that behavior in production use.
ALSO IN THIS PACKAGE
PLUGINS
5 itemsPLUGIN
document-skills
Collection of document processing suite including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and PDF capabilities
PLUGIN
example-skills
Collection of example skills demonstrating various capabilities including skill creation, MCP building, visual design, algorithmic art, internal communications, web testing, artifact building, Slack GIFs, and theme styling
PLUGIN
claude-api
Claude API and SDK documentation skill for building LLM-powered applications
PLUGIN
academy-guide
Recommends relevant Claude Academy courses, tutorials, and use cases when users ask how to use Claude
PLUGIN
discernment-nudge
Appends two or three short follow-up questions after a substantive answer to help users check key facts, probe the reasoning, and notice missing context
WHAT'S INSIDE
18 showing · 18 totalReady to use
Nothing else to set up — install it and go.
18 of 18
SETUP
Showing all 18 skills
algorithmic-art
Artwork drawn by a program instead of by hand — you get a web page with the picture on it and a panel of sliders that reshape it as you move them.
brand-guidelines
Anthropic's official colors, fonts and typography rules, ready to apply to something you have already made.
canvas-design
Give it a subject and it designs a one-page piece of art around it — inventing a visual style of its own first, then drawing the finished piece as a PDF or image.
claude-api
The current facts about calling Claude — which models exist, what they cost, what each one accepts — instead of whatever an assistant half-remembers.
doc-coauthoring
A way of writing a serious document with Claude: you unload everything you know, it gets built up section by section, and then a reader who knows none of it says where it stops making sense.
docx
Word files without opening Word — create one, pull the text back out, or change an existing one in place, then render it to check it still looks right.
frontend-design
Design a website or app screen that looks like it was made for this one subject, rather than the interchangeable look that generated pages tend to land on.
internal-comms
Writes the messages that go round a company — the weekly team update, a newsletter item, the answer to a question everyone keeps asking, the write-up after something broke — each in the shape that kind of message is meant to take.
mcp-builder
Build an MCP server: the connector that lets an AI assistant use an outside service, with each of that service's features turned into an action the assistant can pick and call.
Whatever needs doing to a PDF gets done by a script instead of by hand in a PDF editor.
pptx
Makes a PowerPoint deck from nothing, or fills in one you already have, and looks at the finished slides to see that they came out right.
skill-creator
The loop for building a new skill for Claude and finding out whether it actually helps: write it, run real prompts through Claude with it and without it, then compare.
slack-gif-creator
An animated GIF drawn frame by frame and sized to Slack's limits, whether it is going in as a custom emoji or posted into a message.
template-skill
theme-factory
Ten ready-made looks — a color palette and a matching pair of fonts each — that turn a plain deck or page into something that looks deliberately styled.
web-artifacts-builder
A claude.ai artifact that behaves like a real app rather than a single-page sketch, put together from ready-made interface pieces and shipped as one file.
webapp-testing
Drives a website running on your own machine the way a real visitor would — automatically, in a real browser — so you can see whether it actually behaves as it should.
xlsx
Whatever needs doing to a spreadsheet file, done to the file itself — and every formula is actually recalculated before it comes back, so nothing arrives broken.
No skill in this package matches that.
HOW TO GET IT
WHOLE PACKAGEInstall the whole package (18 skills)
npx skills add anthropics/skillsSINGLE SKILLOr install a single skill
npx skills add anthropics/skills --skill <name> --full-depthPick the skill name from the Skills tab — each entry there installs independently.
PLUGIN MARKETPLACEAdd the marketplace, then install the plugins you want
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills/plugin install claude-api@anthropic-agent-skillsTyped inside the agent's own prompt, not in a terminal. The marketplace lists 5 plugins; three are shown. Every one installs the same way, with its own name before @anthropic-agent-skills.