Anthropic Agent Skills vs Hugging Face Skills

Note: This repository contains Anthropic's implementation of skills for Claude. For information about the Agent Skills standard, see agentskills.io.

Skills

Skills are folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude loads dynamically to improve performance on specialized tasks. Skills teach Claude how to complete specific tasks in a repeatable way, whether that's creating documents with your company's brand guidelines, analyzing data using your organization's specific workflows, or automating personal tasks.

For more information, check out:

• What are skills?
• Using skills in Claude
• How to create custom skills
• Equipping agents for the real world with Agent Skills

About This Repository

This repository contains skills that demonstrate what's possible with Claude's skills system. These skills range from creative applications (art, music, design) to technical tasks (testing web apps, MCP server generation) to enterprise workflows (communications, branding, etc.).

Each skill is self-contained in its own folder with a SKILL.md file containing the instructions and metadata that Claude uses. Browse through these skills to get inspiration for your own skills or to understand different patterns and approaches.

Many skills in this repo are open source (Apache 2.0). We've also included the document creation & editing skills that power Claude's document capabilities under the hood in the skills/docx, skills/pdf, skills/pptx, and skills/xlsx subfolders. These are also open source (Apache 2.0), and we wanted to share them with developers as a reference for more complex skills that are actively used in a production AI application.

Disclaimer

These skills are provided for demonstration and educational purposes only. While some of these capabilities may be available in Claude, the implementations and behaviors you receive from Claude may differ from what is shown in these skills. These skills are meant to illustrate patterns and possibilities. Always test skills thoroughly in your own environment before relying on them for critical tasks.

Skill Sets

• ./skills: Skill examples for Creative & Design, Development & Technical, Enterprise & Communication, and Document Skills
• ./spec: The Agent Skills specification
• ./template: Skill template

Try in Claude Code, Claude.ai, and the API

Claude Code

You can register this repository as a Claude Code Plugin marketplace by running the following command in Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills

Then, to install a specific set of skills:

1. Select Browse and install plugins
2. Select anthropic-agent-skills
3. Select document-skills or example-skills
4. Select Install now

Alternatively, directly install either Plugin via:

/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills
/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills

After installing the plugin, you can use the skill by just mentioning it. For instance, if you install the document-skills plugin from the marketplace, you can ask Claude Code to do something like: "Use the PDF skill to extract the form fields from path/to/some-file.pdf"

Claude.ai

These example skills are all already available to paid plans in Claude.ai.

To use any skill from this repository or upload custom skills, follow the instructions in Using skills in Claude.

Claude API

You can use Anthropic's pre-built skills, and upload custom skills, via the Claude API. See the Skills API Quickstart for more.

Creating a Basic Skill

Skills are simple to create - just a folder with a SKILL.md file containing YAML frontmatter and instructions. You can use the template-skill in this repository as a starting point:

---
name: my-skill-name
description: A clear description of what this skill does and when to use it
---

## My Skill Name

[Add your instructions here that Claude will follow when this skill is active]

## Examples
- Example usage 1
- Example usage 2

## Guidelines
- Guideline 1
- Guideline 2

The frontmatter requires only two fields:

• name - A unique identifier for your skill (lowercase, hyphens for spaces)
• description - A complete description of what the skill does and when to use it

The markdown content below contains the instructions, examples, and guidelines that Claude will follow. For more details, see How to create custom skills.

Partner Skills

Skills are a great way to teach Claude how to get better at using specific pieces of software. As we see awesome example skills from partners, we may highlight some of them here:

• Notion - Notion Skills for Claude

Hugging Face Skills

Hugging Face Skills are definitions for AI/ML tasks like dataset creation, model training, and evaluation. The client plugin marketplaces expose the hf-cli skill as the bootstrap path for core Hub operations; additional workflow skills can be installed on demand with hf skills add <skill-name> or discovered by skill-aware clients over CLI/MCP integrations.

The skills in this repository follow the standardized Agent Skills format.

[!NOTE]
Just want to give your agent access to the Hugging Face Hub? Start with hf-cli. It's the recommended first Skill to install: it teaches your agent every hf command (search models, manage datasets and buckets, launch Spaces, run jobs) and is generated from your locally installed CLI so it stays current.

How do Skills work?

In practice, skills are self-contained folders that package instructions, scripts, and resources together for an AI agent to use on a specific use case. Each folder includes a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter (name and description) followed by the guidance your coding agent follows while the skill is active.

[!TIP]
If your agent doesn't support skills, you can use agentsmd/AGENTS.md directly as a fallback.

The hf-cli skill in this repository is also available through:

• Cursor Marketplace (https://cursor.com/marketplace/huggingface)
• Codex Plugins Directory (https://developers.openai.com/codex/plugins)

Installation

Hugging Face skills are compatible with Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, and Cursor.

Claude Code

1. Register the repository as a plugin marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add huggingface/skills

2. Install the CLI skill:

/plugin install hf-cli@huggingface/skills

3. To install another Hugging Face skill, use the hf CLI:

hf skills add <skill-name>

Codex

1. Copy or symlink any skills you want to use from this repository's skills/ directory into one of Codex's standard .agents/skills locations (for example, $REPO_ROOT/.agents/skills or $HOME/.agents/skills) as described in the Codex Skills guide.

2. Once a skill is available in one of those locations, Codex will discover it using the Agent Skills standard and load the SKILL.md instructions when it decides to use that skill or when you explicitly invoke it.

3. If your Codex setup still relies on AGENTS.md, you can use the generated agentsmd/AGENTS.md file in this repo as a fallback bundle of instructions.

Gemini CLI

1. This repo includes gemini-extension.json to integrate with the Gemini CLI.

2. Install locally:

gemini extensions install . --consent

or use the GitHub URL:

gemini extensions install https://github.com/huggingface/skills.git --consent

4. See Gemini CLI extensions docs for more help.

Cursor

This repository includes Cursor plugin manifests:

• .cursor-plugin/plugin.json
• .mcp.json (configured with the Hugging Face MCP server URL)

Install from repository URL (or local checkout) via the Cursor plugin flow. The marketplace entry is intentionally limited to hf-cli; use hf skills add <skill-name> to install additional workflow skills.

For contributors, regenerate manifests with:

./scripts/publish.sh

Skills

This repository contains a few skills to get you started. You can also contribute your own skills to the repository.

Available skills

Using skills in your coding agent

Once a skill is installed, mention it directly while giving your coding agent instructions:

• "Use the HF LLM trainer skill to estimate the GPU memory needed for a 70B model run."
• "Use the HF model evaluation skill to launch run_eval_job.py on the latest checkpoint."
• "Use the HF dataset creator skill to draft new few-shot classification templates."
• "Use the HF paper publisher skill to index my arXiv paper and link it to my model."

Your coding agent automatically loads the corresponding SKILL.md instructions and helper scripts while it completes the task.

Contribute or customize a skill

1. Copy one of the existing skill folders (for example, hf-datasets/) and rename it.
2. Update the new folder's SKILL.md frontmatter:

   ---
   name: my-skill-name
   description: Describe what the skill does and when to use it
   ---
   
   # Skill Title
   Guidance + examples + guardrails
   

   Copy
3. Add or edit supporting scripts, templates, and documents referenced by your instructions.
4. Do not add the skill to .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by default. Client marketplaces are intentionally limited to hf-cli; the full Hub CLI marketplace is generated at .claude-plugin/marketplace-internal.json.
5. Run:

   ./scripts/publish.sh
   

   Copy
   to regenerate and validate all generated metadata.
6. Reinstall or reload the skill bundle in your coding agent so the updated folder is available.

Marketplace

The .claude-plugin/marketplace.json and .cursor-plugin/marketplace.json files intentionally expose only hf-cli for client marketplace installation. This keeps install-time manifests focused on core Hub operations and points users to hf skills add <skill-name> for the rest of the repository.

The generated .claude-plugin/marketplace-internal.json file contains the full skill list. Publish automation uploads it to the Hub bucket as marketplace.json so hf skills list, hf skills add, and hf skills update continue to see every available skill.

Newer skill-aware integrations can also pull capabilities dynamically. Hugging Face's discovery flow lets clients search skills, MCP servers, and Spaces, while Skills-over-MCP work is standardizing how skills are discovered and consumed through MCP resources.

Additional references

• Browse the latest instructions, scripts, and templates directly at huggingface/skills.
• Review Hugging Face documentation for the specific libraries or workflows you reference inside each skill.