Where are Claude skills stored?

All Claude skill locations at a glance

Where you save a skill decides which sessions load it. Claude rows come first; Cursor and Codex are at the bottom because they read some of the same folders. To add a skill in any of these places, see how to install Claude skills.

Because Cursor also reads .claude/skills/, and Cursor and Codex both read .agents/skills/, one committed folder can serve more than one tool. Claude Code does not read .agents/skills/, and the Codex docs don't list .codex/skills/. Subagents, hooks and MCP servers live in other files; see skills vs MCP vs subagents vs hooks for when to use each.

Personal skills: ~/.claude/skills

Skills in ~/.claude/skills/<name>/ are available in every project on this machine. On Windows the folder is %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\. If you set CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, every ~/.claude path moves under that folder instead. Cowork sessions, cloud sessions and routines don't read this folder; a routine that invokes a skill that exists only here reports that the skill was not found.

Project skills: .claude/skills

Claude Code loads .claude/skills/ from the folder where you start it and every parent up to the repository root, so starting in packages/frontend/ still picks up root skills. In a linked git worktree it searches only up to the worktree root, and on v2.1.277 or later it falls back to the main checkout's project skills when the worktree has no .claude/skills of its own. Moving the session with /cd (v2.1.246+) adds the new folder's skills.

Nested .claude/skills/ folders below the start folder load the first time Claude reads or edits a file there, and stay for the rest of the session. Run /add-dir with the subfolder's path (v2.1.257+) to load them sooner. Folders added with --add-dir or /add-dir load their .claude/skills/ (plus .claude/commands/ and .claude/agents/).

Enterprise (managed) skills

Administrators deploy skills to .claude/skills/ inside the managed settings directory. The Claude Code docs give the Linux example /etc/claude-code/.claude/skills/<skill-name>/. The managed settings directories themselves are /Library/Application Support/ClaudeCode/ on macOS, /etc/claude-code/ on Linux and WSL, and C:\Program Files\ClaudeCode\ on Windows; the docs show the .claude/skills sub-path only for Linux.

What a skill folder looks like

A skill is a folder that contains SKILL.md and, optionally, scripts/, references/ and assets/. The folder can be a symlink to a folder elsewhere; Claude Code reads SKILL.md from the target and loads it once even if several locations point at it. Don't name a skill folder synced: Claude Code reserves ~/.claude/skills/synced/ for claude.ai skills and skips an authored skill with that name. For the frontmatter fields, see the SKILL.md frontmatter reference; for a walkthrough, see how to create an Agent Skill.

~/.claude/skills/
└── summarize-changes/
    ├── SKILL.md          # required: frontmatter + instructions
    ├── scripts/          # optional
    ├── references/       # optional
    └── assets/           # optional

Where plugin skills are installed

Claude Code keeps plugin files under one plugins root, ~/.claude/plugins unless you set CLAUDE_CODE_PLUGIN_CACHE_DIR. Marketplace plugins are copied into the cache at install; plugins loaded with --plugin-dir, from a local-directory marketplace by relative path, or from a skill folder with .claude-plugin/plugin.json (loaded as <name>@skills-dir) load in place. See Claude Code plugins vs skills and Claude skills marketplaces compared.

Skills in the Claude app, Cowork and claude.ai

Skills you add in the Claude app (claude.ai or Claude Desktop) are stored in your Claude account, not in a folder you manage: you upload a ZIP of the skill folder in Customize, then Skills. Skills need code execution and are available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans. Anthropic doesn't document a local folder for chat skills.

• Cowork loads the skills enabled for your claude.ai account, synced at session start, and doesn't read ~/.claude/skills/.
• Cloud sessions and routines load your account's skills plus the repository's committed .claude/skills/. Plugins declared in the repo's .claude/settings.json or enabled only in your user settings don't load there.
• In the terminal, Claude Code v2.1.273 or later downloads your account's skills to ~/.claude/skills/synced/ at session start and checks for changes about every 10 minutes. /skills lists them under claude.ai sync.
• The sync is one-way: editing a file under ~/.claude/skills/synced/ doesn't change the skill on claude.ai, and a later sync can overwrite it.
• No sync happens with API-key or token-variable sign-ins, on Amazon Bedrock, with CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC, in bare mode or --safe-mode, or when managed settings lock skills to plugins. Set syncClaudeAiSkills to false in user settings to stop it.
• The Agent SDK loads skills from ~/.claude/skills/ and .claude/skills/ through its user and project setting sources.

Which location wins when two skills have the same name?

Where each skill came from decides which one /name runs:

• Enterprise beats personal, and personal beats project.
• A skill beats a .claude/commands/ file with the same name.
• Your skill replaces a bundled command with that name, but not the bundled command's aliases.
• Plugin skills are namespaced as /plugin-name:skill-name, so both load.
• A root skill and a nested skill with the same name both load.
• A skill synced from claude.ai yields to any other skill or command with that name and still runs as /anthropic-skills:<name>. Since v2.1.282, skill folders in the anthropic-skills or claude-ai namespace no longer load.

Where should you put a skill?

Pick the location by who needs the skill:

AIPM installs versioned skills from the registry into the folder each tool reads and records them, so you can list, update or remove them later. --target claude writes .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md, --target codex writes .agents/skills/<name>/SKILL.md, and -g installs under your home folder instead of the project. Using Cursor? Run aipm init --target cursor. That writes .cursor/skills/<skill>/SKILL.md. Cursor also reads .claude/skills and .agents/skills. Browse Claude skills or see all commands.

• Just for you, in every project: ~/.claude/skills/.
• For everyone who works in this repo: .claude/skills/, committed.
• In Cowork, the Claude app or cloud sessions: enable it on your claude.ai account.
• Across several repos or for a team: a plugin marketplace, or a versioned package from a registry (compare the team options).
• For the whole organization: managed settings, or skills provisioned by an owner of your Claude organization.

npm install -g @aipm-registry/cli
aipm init --target cursor                    # -> .cursor/skills/<skill>/SKILL.md
aipm add @scope/name@1.0.0 --target claude   # -> .claude/skills/name/SKILL.md
aipm add @scope/name@1.0.0 --target codex    # -> .agents/skills/name/SKILL.md
aipm list
aipm remove @scope/name

How to find and check your skills

Run /skills in Claude Code to see every loaded skill grouped by source. From a shell, list the folders directly. To find SKILL.md files whose frontmatter doesn't parse, run claude plugin validate on the skills folder (it checks a bare .claude/skills folder from v2.1.233).

Edits to an existing SKILL.md are picked up during the session. A top-level skills folder that didn't exist when the session started needs a restart. If personal skills disappeared, look in ~/.claude/skills/.trash/; trash entries are deleted 30 days after they were moved by default. Before v2.1.280, a manifest.json in ~/.claude/skills/ could move the skills it listed into the trash.

ls ~/.claude/skills/*/SKILL.md
ls .claude/skills/*/SKILL.md
claude plugin validate .claude/skills
claude plugin validate ~/.claude/skills

How to move or remove a skill

How you remove a skill depends on where it came from:

• Personal or project: delete ~/.claude/skills/<name>/ or .claude/skills/<name>/.
• Plugin: disable or uninstall the plugin with /plugin uninstall <plugin>@<marketplace>.
• Synced from claude.ai: turn it off on claude.ai; deleting the folder by hand just makes the next sync download it again.
• Enterprise: an administrator deletes it from the managed settings directory.
• Bundled: set disableBundledSkills to true, or set one skill to off in skillOverrides.
• Installed with AIPM: aipm remove @scope/name deletes the files it tracked.

Cursor and Codex skill folders

Cursor loads project skills from .cursor/skills/ and .agents/skills/, and user skills from ~/.cursor/skills/ and ~/.agents/skills/. For compatibility it also reads .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/, ~/.claude/skills/ and ~/.codex/skills/, so Claude Code project skills already work in Cursor. It walks the skills root recursively, scopes nested folders to their directory, and expects name to match the folder. See how to install Cursor skills.

Codex scans .agents/skills from your working folder up to the repository root, then $HOME/.agents/skills, /etc/codex/skills and its bundled skills. It doesn't read .claude/skills/. See Claude Code skills vs Codex skills.

Where are Claude Code skills stored?

Personal skills are in ~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md and project skills are in .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md inside the repository.

Where is the Claude skills folder on Windows?

In %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\, because Claude Code resolves ~/.claude to the .claude folder in your user profile.

Where are skills from the Claude app stored?

In your claude.ai account. Claude Code v2.1.273 or later, signed in with that account, downloads them to ~/.claude/skills/synced/.

Where are Claude Code plugins installed?

Under ~/.claude/plugins/cache/<marketplace>/<plugin>/<version>/, unless you set CLAUDE_CODE_PLUGIN_CACHE_DIR.

Do Cowork and cloud sessions use my ~/.claude/skills?

No. Enable the skill on your claude.ai account, or, for cloud sessions, commit it to the repository's .claude/skills/.

Which skill wins if two have the same name?

Enterprise beats personal, and personal beats project. Plugin skills are namespaced, so they load alongside the others.

My personal skills disappeared. Where did they go?

Check ~/.claude/skills/.trash/. Trash entries are kept for 30 days by default before the cleanup deletes them.

Can Cursor or Codex use my Claude skills folder?

Cursor also reads .claude/skills/ and ~/.claude/skills/. Codex reads .agents/skills/, not .claude/skills/.