Claude skills on GitHub: the repositories worth installing from

Claude skills GitHub: where to start

Almost every Claude skill lives in a GitHub repository, and the format is simple: a folder with a SKILL.md file, sometimes with scripts and reference documents next to it. Start with Anthropic’s own anthropics/skills, then pick a vendor or author repository for the job you have. Install it with the skills CLI or as a Claude Code plugin, and read the files first. The table above sorts the 195 repositories we reviewed by stars; this page explains which ones to open and why stars are only half the story.

Star counts below were recorded on 2026-10-29. They show attention, not quality, and they are easy to inflate. Every repository here also has a depth score, a verdict and a security status from our review. See the methodology for how those are assigned.

The best GitHub Claude skills repositories

Official and vendor repositories

When a company writes skills for its own product, the skills tend to be specific and kept current. The trade-off is that they steer you toward that company’s tools.

• anthropics/skills: 184,593 stars. Anthropic’s public repository of Agent Skills, with 20 skills including document tools, a skill-creator and design skills. Depth 4, Recommended. Check each folder’s license: many skills are Apache 2.0, but the docx, pdf, pptx and xlsx skills are source-available, not open source.
• anthropics/claude-plugins-official: 45,177 stars. Anthropic’s plugin catalog. We list it With caveats because it is a catalog: each plugin, especially the chat-channel ones, needs its own review.
• vercel-labs/agent-skills: 33,181 stars. React, Next.js and Vercel skills, Recommended at depth 3. Two skills pull live instructions from GitHub and the deploy skills touch your Vercel account, so its status is Broad access.
• vercel-labs/skills: 37,069 stars. The skills package manager CLI itself. Recommended, MIT licensed; it sends anonymous usage data unless you opt out.
• microsoft/azure-skills: 94 skills for Azure work, depth 4. The agent acts on live resources, so use a least-privilege identity.
• google/skills: 21,653 stars and 182 skills for Google Cloud, Ads, Analytics and Apigee. Official and detailed; the scripts call Google APIs with your credentials.
• cloudflare/skills and cloudflare/security-audit-skill: the second has 51,995 stars and a depth of 5.

Community methodology and design repositories

• obra/superpowers: 307,689 stars, 15 skills. A development methodology that makes the agent plan before it codes. Depth 3.
• mattpocock/skills: 305,988 stars, 38 skills. Small and composable; several skills have a clean security status.
• addyosmani/agent-skills: 111,533 stars, 25 engineering-lifecycle skills. It overlaps with Superpowers.
• nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill: 142,208 stars. Design catalogs plus a design-system generator, depth 4.
• leonxlnx/taste-skill and Nutlope/hallmark: two design skills with scripts and evals.
• coreyhaines31/marketingskills: 57,178 stars, 52 marketing skills at depth 4.

For a ranked shortlist by job, use best Claude skills.

Awesome lists and big collections

Several of the most starred repositories are collections, not single skills. They help you find names but ask for more care.

• ComposioHQ/awesome-claude-skills: 78,228 stars. A curated list plus hundreds of wrapper skills that run through Composio’s hosted service. With caveats, depth 1, and no license file was detected.
• github/awesome-copilot: 40,534 stars. A GitHub-run community collection of skills, agents and plugins (466 skills in our data). Contributions are third-party and uneven, so read individual skills before installing.
• sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills: 48,690 stars. Roughly 2,900 community playbooks. We could review only a fraction.
• affaan-m/ecc: 292,012 stars. A large harness with hooks, 311 skills by its README’s count, and a commercial tier. Choose a minimal profile.

Repositories to treat with extra care

Popularity and risk often go together. Repositories with many stars and a Broad access status in our data include browser-use (119,437 stars; telemetry, curl | sh setup steps and some cookie access) and paperclip. A Broad access label means “know what you are granting”, not “never install”; each page lists the reasons.

How to install a Claude skill from GitHub

Pick one of three routes.

1. The skills CLI. The skills CLI works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and many other agents:

npx skills add owner/repo -a claude-code
npx skills add owner/repo --skill skill-name -g

-a picks the agent, --skill takes one skill from a multi-skill repository, and -g installs for all projects instead of the current one. It needs Node.js 22.20 or later, and npx skills list, update and remove manage what you installed.

2. A Claude Code plugin marketplace. A repository with a plugin manifest can be added directly. Using Anthropic’s repository as the example, from the README:

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills

For other repositories, /plugin marketplace add owner/repo takes GitHub shorthand, and owner/repo#v1.2.0 pins a branch or tag, as the plugin docs describe. Of our 195 repositories, 121 have a plugin manifest.

3. Copy the folder. Clone the repository, read it, and copy the skill folder into ~/.claude/skills/<name>/ for all projects or .claude/skills/<name>/ for one project, as described in the Claude Code docs. Committing the project folder shares the skill with your team. This route lets you review every file before the agent sees it, and it works for any agent that reads a skills directory.

Full per-agent instructions are in how to install Claude skills, and folder paths for Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode and others are on the platforms pages.

How to vet a Claude skills repository

A skill is instructions plus, often, code that runs with your permissions. Before you install from any repository, spend five minutes on this list.

1. Read SKILL.md and every script. Look for network calls, curl | sh, rm -rf, and anything that sends your files or keys elsewhere.
2. Check the frontmatter. allowed-tools pre-approves tools while the skill runs. The Claude Code docs say project skills’ allowed-tools apply even in untrusted folders, so review skills in a repository before you run Claude Code there.
3. Look for hooks and MCP servers. A plugin can run both. Open hooks/ and any .mcp.json or plugin manifest.
4. Look for run-time downloads. A skill that fetches its instructions from a URL can change after you reviewed it. Pin a tag or commit where you can.
5. Check the license and the last push. In our data, 13 repositories show no license and 17 show “NOASSERTION”. Abandoned repositories get no security fixes.
6. Compare stars with usage. A huge star count next to almost no recorded installs is a reason to look closer; stars and installs are both easy to inflate.
7. Run a scanner, then read the findings. NVIDIA SkillSpector and Cisco skill-scanner are both in our list. In our own run, the raw scanner output said “do not install” for 193 of 286 popular skills, mostly for patterns mentioned in documentation, so the score is a lead, not a verdict.

Our reviews apply the same checks and record the result per file. For 182 of 195 repositories the review is marked partial, usually because the repository is large or the skill depends on code outside it, and the page says what we could not see. The security page explains every flag.

Finding more skill repositories on GitHub

Search the skills directory here first: filter by Recommended and Depth 4-5, or browse by category. On GitHub itself, vendor organizations are the safest place to look (Anthropic, Vercel, Microsoft, Google, Cloudflare and Supabase all publish skills), followed by authors whose repositories show regular commits, a license and tests.