# Sharing Custom Skills

You can build your own skill in a work folder and share it with everyone in your account — without publishing anything to a public website. The person who built the skill clicks **Share**; everyone else sees it in their **Skills** section and installs it with one click.

With custom skill sharing you can:

- **Share a skill you built** with your whole account — privately, from inside Studio.
- **Install skills your teammates share** so they apply to all your chats.
- **Bring a shared skill into your own work folder** to adapt it or combine it with others.
- **Keep your shared skills up to date** and see how many people are using them.


How this differs from the Plugin Marketplace
The [Plugin Marketplace](/products/ai-studio/skills/marketplace) installs skills from **public GitHub repositories** — great for catalogs anyone on the internet can use. Custom skill sharing is the opposite: it keeps skills **inside your account**, visible only to your teammates. Use it for skills you can't or don't want to publish publicly, or when whoever built the skill simply doesn't want to deal with GitHub. Nothing leaves your account, and there's no repository to create or maintain.

## Objective

Understand how to share a custom skill with your account, install skills others have shared, bring shared skills into your work folders, and manage your shared skills over time.

## Prerequisites

- Signed in to Treasure AI Studio ([Getting Started](/products/ai-studio/getting-started))
- Familiarity with how skills work ([Skills & Marketplace](/products/ai-studio/skills/skills))
- A [work folder](/products/ai-studio/concepts) — skills are built and shared from within a work folder (the **Develop** tab appears only once you have at least one work folder)


## Key Concepts

A few terms appear throughout this page and in the interface:

| Term | What It Means |
|  --- | --- |
| **Skill** | A single instruction package that teaches the AI to do something specific. See [Skills & Marketplace](/products/ai-studio/skills/skills). |
| **Plugin** | The unit you share and install. A plugin bundles one or more skills from a work folder under a single name. When you share, you share a plugin. |
| **Sharing (publishing)** | Making a plugin available to everyone in your account. Shared plugins live in your account only — they are never posted to GitHub or anywhere public. |
| **Installing (subscribing)** | Adding a shared plugin to your own skills so it applies to your chats. The person who installs is a *subscriber*. |
| **Work Folder** | Your working context where you build and keep skills before sharing them. See [Core Concepts](/products/ai-studio/concepts). |


When a plugin is shared, its skills are invoked in chat as `/{plugin-name}:<skill>` — for example, `/weekly-automation:summary`.

## Where to Find It

Custom skill sharing lives in the **Skills** section of the Studio sidebar (the sparkles icon). It has three tabs:

| Tab | What It's For |
|  --- | --- |
| **Shared** | Browse and install skills your teammates have shared across the account. |
| **Installed** | See and manage the shared skills you've installed. |
| **Develop** | Build, share, and manage your own skills. This tab appears only when you have at least one work folder. |


Web and Desktop
Building and sharing skills is done on Web and Desktop. Skills you install apply to your sessions on every platform, including Mobile.

## Sharing a Skill You Built

You share skills from the **Develop** tab. Each of your work folders appears as its own section, listing the skills inside it.

The Develop tab showing a work folder named Message Skills with three draft skills and a Share selected button
### Step 1 — Build skills in a work folder

Skills start as drafts inside a work folder. A skill that hasn't been shared yet shows a **Draft** status. (For how work folders hold skills and context, see [Core Concepts](/products/ai-studio/concepts).)

Where a skill must live
For a skill to be recognized, it must follow the standard layout inside the work folder: each skill is its own folder under `.claude/skills/`, containing a `SKILL.md` file.

```
your-project/    # the work folder's directory slug (set at creation)
└── .claude/
    └── skills/
        ├── create-message/
        │   └── SKILL.md
        └── email-campaign/
            └── SKILL.md
```

The folder name is the skill name. A `SKILL.md` placed anywhere else — or a skill folder without a `SKILL.md` — is **not** picked up and won't appear in the Develop tab.

### Step 2 — Share the skills

1. Open the **Develop** tab and find the work folder with the skills you want to share.
2. Select the draft skills you'd like to include.
3. Click **Share selected**. The **Share skills** dialog opens.
4. Enter a **Plugin name**. This is how teammates will find and invoke the plugin.
  - Use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only (for example, `weekly-automation`).
  - The name must be unique within your account.
  - As you type, Studio shows how the plugin will be invoked: `/{plugin-name}:<skill>`.
5. Confirm which **skills to share** are checked.
6. Click **Share**.


The Share skills dialog with a Plugin name field, the invocation hint /message:<skill>, and a checklist of skills to share
Your plugin is now shared. The work folder section shows a **Published** badge with the number of skills shared, and each shared skill's status changes from **Draft** to **Shared**.

Sharing is account-only
Sharing makes the plugin available to people in your account — and only them. It is not posted to GitHub or any public location, and people outside your account can't see it.

Before you share
Only the skill's files are shared — not your personal setup. Libraries you added yourself won't be present for others (the AI usually installs what a skill needs, but having the skill install its own dependencies is safest), and your [Connections](/products/ai-studio/connections) and credentials aren't shared — so a skill that relies on an external connection works only if the subscriber has set up the same one. Test the skill in a new chat before sharing.

Files over 1 MB are not included
Each file in a skill must be **1 MB or smaller** to be shared. Any individual file larger than 1 MB is **excluded** from the published plugin — it is not uploaded, and subscribers never receive it. The Share and Push update dialogs note this limit. Keep skill assets (reference data, examples, images) small, or host large files elsewhere and have the skill reference them by URL instead of bundling them.

### Understanding skill status

In the Develop tab, each skill shows where it stands:

| Status | Meaning |
|  --- | --- |
| **Draft** | Built in your work folder but not shared yet. |
| **Shared** | Published to the account and visible to teammates. |
| **Shared (hidden)** | Published, but kept out of the Shared listing on purpose. Use this for skills that aren't meant to be picked and run on their own — for example, a helper skill that another skill builds on. It still works if invoked; it just doesn't clutter the catalog people browse. |


The top of the Develop tab also summarizes your activity: how many **Shared skills** you've published and your **Total subscriptions** — the combined number of people across the account using your skills. Each published work folder also shows its own subscription count, so you can see which skills are catching on.

A published work folder in the Develop tab showing the Published badge, subscription count, Push update, Edit, and Unpublish actions, and skills marked Shared and Shared (hidden)
## Keeping Shared Skills Up to Date

Sharing captures a **snapshot** of your skills at the moment you share them. When you later edit a skill in your work folder, the shared copy your teammates use does **not** change automatically — you decide when to push the update.

When a shared skill differs from what you've published, the Develop tab flags it:

- The skill row shows a **Changed** marker.
- The work folder shows an **Updates to push** indicator.


To publish your latest changes, click **Push update**. Studio re-syncs the work folder's current skills to everyone who installed the plugin. After pushing, the section shows when it was **Last pushed**. As with the initial share, files larger than 1 MB are not included in the update.

The Develop tab showing an Updates to push indicator on the work folder and a Changed marker on a skill that was edited since the last push
When subscribers get the update
A pushed update reaches the people who installed your plugin **the next time they start a chat** — skills are loaded when a chat session begins, so a conversation that's already open keeps using the version it started with. Nobody needs to reinstall: their next new chat automatically picks up your latest pushed version.

Why updates aren't automatic
Because publishing is a snapshot, your work-in-progress edits never reach subscribers until you're ready. You can refine a skill freely and push the update only when it's polished.

## Editing, Hiding, and Removing Shared Skills

Open the **Edit shared plugin** dialog from a shared work folder to change what's in the plugin or rename it.

- **Add or remove skills** — check or uncheck skills to change what the plugin includes.
- **Rename the plugin** — change the plugin name.


Renaming changes the invocation path
Renaming a plugin changes how its skills are invoked, from `/{old-name}:<skill>` to `/{new-name}:<skill>`. The old name stops working, so let anyone who uses it know before you rename.

You can also manage individual shared skills from the skill's actions menu:

| Action | What It Does |
|  --- | --- |
| **Hide from listing** / **Show in listing** | Control whether a shared skill appears in the Shared tab. Hiding is meant for skills that shouldn't be discovered and run on their own — such as building-block skills that other skills rely on. Hiding doesn't disable the skill or affect anyone already using it; it only keeps it out of the browse listing. |
| **Retract** | Remove a single skill from the account registry. Anyone who installed it loses access to that skill. |


### Unpublishing an entire plugin

To stop sharing a plugin completely, use **Unpublish**. This removes all of the plugin's skills from the account and revokes access for everyone using it.

Unpublishing affects current subscribers
If people are currently subscribed, Studio warns you before unpublishing — it tells you how many are subscribed and reminds you that unpublishing removes all skills in this plugin from the registry and revokes access for every subscriber. Make sure no one depends on the plugin before you unpublish.

The Unpublish confirmation dialog warning that subscribers will lose access, with Cancel and a red Unpublish button
If you delete the work folder
Deleting the work folder a plugin came from doesn't unshare it — the plugin stays available to subscribers. The Develop tab flags the orphaned plugin and lets you **Unpublish** it to remove it from the account.

## Using a Skill Someone Shared

The **Shared** tab lists every skill shared across your account.

The Shared tab listing an account plugin with its skills, a search box, a sort selector, a Show hidden skills toggle, and an Install button
1. Open the **Shared** tab.
2. Find a skill using **Search** or sort the list by **Recently updated** or **Name**. Each skill shows who shared it (**by {author}**).
3. Click **Install**. The **Install** dialog gives you two choices:


| Option | What Happens |
|  --- | --- |
| **Install** | The plugin becomes available in **all your chats**. This is the everyday choice — you just want to use the skill. |
| **Bring in for development** | Copies all the plugin's skills into one of your work folders, where you can **customize them or combine them with other skills**. Choose an existing work folder or create a new one. |


The Install dialog showing two options: Install (becomes available in all chats) and Bring in for development (copies the skills into a work folder)
Once installed, the skill shows an **Installed** label and is available in all your chats. There are two ways it gets used:

- **Invoke it directly** — type `/{plugin-name}:<skill>` in the chat input to call the skill explicitly.
- **Let the AI apply it** — the AI also applies the skill on its own when your request relates to what it does, with no explicit call needed.


Bring in makes an independent copy
**Bring in for development** copies the skills into your work folder so you can change them freely. The copy is independent of the original: your edits don't affect anyone else, and if the original author later pushes an update, your copy does **not** update automatically.

Finding hidden skills
Some shared skills are hidden from the listing on purpose — usually building-block skills meant to support other skills rather than be run directly. To see them anyway, turn on **Show hidden skills** in the Shared tab. (Hidden skills still work normally once installed.)

Changes apply to new chats
Skills are loaded when a chat session starts. After you install (or uninstall) a skill, start a new chat for the change to take effect.

## Managing What You've Installed

The **Installed** tab lists every shared plugin you've installed, grouped by plugin and showing who shared each one.

- **Bring a skill into a work folder** — from a plugin's menu, copy its skills into one of your work folders to adapt them.
- **Uninstall** — remove a plugin from your skills. Its skills stop applying to your new chats.


The Bring into a work folder dialog listing the skills that will be copied and a Target work folder picker with a Create new work folder option
If you haven't installed anything yet, the tab reads *"You haven't installed any skills yet."*

## Verification

After reading this guide, you can:

- [ ] Explain the difference between a *skill*, a *plugin*, sharing, and installing
- [ ] Share skills from a work folder as a named plugin, available only inside your account
- [ ] Push an update to a shared plugin after editing its skills
- [ ] Hide, retract, or unpublish shared skills, and understand the effect on subscribers
- [ ] Install a shared skill for all your chats, or bring it into a work folder for development
- [ ] Uninstall a shared skill you no longer need


## Troubleshooting

| Issue | Solution |
|  --- | --- |
| The **Develop** tab isn't visible | The Develop tab appears only when you have at least one work folder. Create a work folder first (see [Core Concepts](/products/ai-studio/concepts)). |
| My skill doesn't show up in the work folder | Check the layout: each skill must be a folder under `.claude/skills/` containing a `SKILL.md` (for example, `.claude/skills/create-message/SKILL.md`). Files in any other location or format are not recognized. |
| Sharing fails with a name error | The plugin name must be unique within your account and use only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. Try a different name. |
| My edits aren't reaching the people who installed my plugin | Sharing publishes a snapshot. Open the **Develop** tab and click **Push update** to send your latest changes. Look for the **Changed** marker and **Updates to push** indicator. |
| A file in my skill is missing after sharing | Files larger than 1 MB are excluded when sharing or pushing. Reduce the file to 1 MB or smaller, or host it externally and reference it by URL from the skill. |
| A teammate can't find the skill I shared | Confirm it isn't set to **hidden** in your Develop tab, and that you clicked **Share** (not just saved a draft). Ask them to start a new chat after installing. |
| A newly installed skill isn't being applied | Start a new chat. Skills are resolved at session start, so existing conversations aren't affected. |
| People outside my account can't see my shared skill | That's expected. Custom skill sharing is account-only. To reach a public audience, publish through a [Plugin Marketplace](/products/ai-studio/skills/marketplace) instead. |


## Next Steps

- [Skills & Marketplace](/products/ai-studio/skills/skills) — How skills work and how the AI applies them
- [Plugin Marketplace](/products/ai-studio/skills/marketplace) — Install skills from public GitHub marketplaces
- [Supported Skills Catalog](/products/ai-studio/skills/skills-catalog) — Reference of the skills delivered by the pre-installed plugins
- [Core Concepts](/products/ai-studio/concepts) — Configure work folders that hold and pre-activate skills