Install Claude Code skills at the right scope.

Use ~/.claude/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md when the workflow should be available across your projects. Use .claude/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md when the instructions belong to one repository and should travel with it.

Claude Code also supports organization-managed and plugin-provided skills. Keep a team convention in the project rather than silently placing it in every contributor's personal folder.

SKILL.md is the entry point, but a working package may also need referenced scripts, templates, examples, or assets. Preserve relative paths and do not copy only the markdown file when its instructions rely on adjacent files.

• Read the entire SKILL.md, including frontmatter and linked references.
• Inspect scripts, dependency manifests, network calls, and filesystem commands.
• Confirm the repository license covers the material you plan to copy or modify.
• Install at the narrowest useful scope and test with a harmless representative prompt.

Claude Code watches existing skill directories for changes. If you created a new top-level skills directory after the session started and it does not appear, restart Claude Code. Invoke a skill directly with its slash name, then test a natural-language prompt that should trigger its description.