Distributing Skills to Teams

Two ways to install skills

Method	Interface	Who it’s for
Claude Desktop	Desktop app	Most users — no terminal required
Claude Code	Terminal	Developers and power users

Both methods support installing skills for yourself or distributing them to a team. The difference is the interface.

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What is a marketplace?

A marketplace is how Claude discovers skills. It’s a GitHub repository with a specific structure — plugin folders and a catalog file — that Claude can read and install from.

When you add a marketplace, Claude downloads the catalog, shows you the available plugins, and lets you install them. When the repository is updated, Claude picks up the changes automatically.

The catalog file lives at .claude-plugin/marketplace.json in the root of the repository. It lists every plugin in the repo and tells Claude where to find each one:

{
  "name": "my-skills",
  "owner": {
    "name": "Your Name"
  },
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "site-planning",
      "source": "./site-planning",
      "description": "Environmental analysis and site research"
    },
    {
      "name": "presentations",
      "source": "./presentations",
      "description": "HTML slide deck generation"
    }
  ]
}

Each plugin listed in the catalog is a folder in the repo containing a .claude-plugin/plugin.json manifest and a skills/ directory with SKILL.md files:

my-skills/
├── .claude-plugin/
│   └── marketplace.json        ← the catalog
├── site-planning/
│   ├── .claude-plugin/
│   │   └── plugin.json         ← plugin manifest
│   └── skills/
│       └── environmental-analysis/SKILL.md
└── presentations/
    ├── .claude-plugin/
    │   └── plugin.json
    └── skills/
        └── slide-deck-generator/SKILL.md

A plugin.json manifest is short:

{
  "name": "site-planning",
  "description": "Site research: environmental analysis and site planning",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "author": { "name": "Your Name" }
}

Without the root marketplace.json, Claude won’t recognize the repository as a source of plugins. The individual plugin.json files inside each plugin folder are also required.

---

Claude Desktop

For yourself

1. Enable network access. Go to Settings → Capabilities and turn on network egress. You only need to do this once.

2. Open the plugin browser. Click Customize in the left sidebar, then Browse plugins.

3. Add the marketplace. Click + → Add marketplace from GitHub.

Enter the repository path — for example, AlpacaLabsLLC/skills-for-architects. The plugins appear under the Personal tab.

4. Install. Click Install on any plugin you want. Once installed, you can see its skills and toggle it on or off.

Type /skills in any conversation to verify.

Updates sync automatically when the repository changes.

For a team

Requires a Claude Team or Enterprise plan. Team members don’t add marketplaces or install anything — you push plugins to them.

1. Structure your repository as a marketplace (see What is a marketplace? above). The repository must be private or internal on github.com.

2. Connect it to your organization. Open Claude Desktop → Organization settings → create a new marketplace → choose GitHub sync and connect the repository.

3. Configure visibility. For each plugin, choose how team members see it:

Setting	What happens
Auto-install	Plugin appears in every member’s installed list automatically
Available	Plugin appears in the browse catalog — members install with one click
Not available	Plugin is hidden (useful for skills you’re still testing)

4. Push updates. When you update a skill, push to the repository, then go to Organization settings → your marketplace → Check for updates. Team members get the new version on their next session.

You can use GitHub’s built-in review workflow as a quality gate — proposed changes go through approval before reaching the version your team sees.

Multiple marketplaces

A single marketplace works for most firms. Consider splitting when different teams need different access levels or update cadences:

Marketplace	Repository	Access
Firm-wide	skills-general	Everyone
Design	skills-design	Design team
Operations	skills-ops	Ops team

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Claude Code (terminal)

Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux — the commands are the same.

For yourself

# Install a single plugin
claude install github:AlpacaLabsLLC/skills-for-architects/01-site-planning

# Install all plugins from a repository
claude install github:AlpacaLabsLLC/skills-for-architects

# Verify
/skills

To update, re-run the install command.

For a team

Add the marketplace to your project’s settings file so team members get it automatically when they open the project:

Create or edit .claude/settings.json in your project root:

{
  "extraKnownMarketplaces": {
    "skills-for-architects": {
      "source": {
        "source": "github",
        "repo": "AlpacaLabsLLC/skills-for-architects"
      }
    }
  },
  "enabledPlugins": {
    "01-site-planning@skills-for-architects": true,
    "03-programming@skills-for-architects": true
  }
}

When a team member opens Claude Code in that project folder and trusts the settings, the marketplace is added and the specified plugins are enabled automatically.

Commit this file to version control so every team member gets the same configuration.