Skill scope and sharing with the team
Where a skill is stored determines who can use it:
| Location | Path | Who can use it |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | Distributed via managed settings | Everyone in the organisation |
| Personal | `~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md` | Only you, in all projects |
| Project | `.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md` | Everyone who clones the repo |
| Plugin | `<plugin>/skills/<name>/SKILL.md` | Wherever the plugin is enabled |
When skills with the same name collide, precedence is enterprise → personal → project. So your ~/.claude/skills/deploy/ skill overrides the project's deploy skill.
Plugin skills are namespaced (plugin-name:skill-name), so they never collide.
There is also a useful mechanism for monorepos: .claude/skills/ folders in subdirectories load when the agent starts working with files in that subdirectory. A skill under feature/orders/.claude/skills/ appears only while working in that module.
The most important team decision: skills belong at project level. A personal skill stays on your machine — a teammate doing the same task gets a different result. A project skill travels with the repo, gets reviewed in PRs, and establishes one process for everyone.
One more nuance: legacy "custom command" files under .claude/commands/ still work and create the same /name command. The difference: a skill is a folder, so it can hold supporting files and can be invoked automatically. For new work the skill format is recommended.
📚 Sources and documentation
- Where skills live and precedenceofficialcode.claude.com
- Pluginsofficialcode.claude.com
For distributing skills, hooks and MCP servers as one package.