A Claude skills marketplace sells skill files: small ZIP folders with a SKILL.md inside that tells Claude how to do one job properly. You upload one in the Claude desktop app under Customize → Skills, switch it on, and Claude works like that specialist until you switch it off. Install takes about three minutes. KissMySkills currently stocks over 2,000 skills, 300+ prompt packs and 100+ agents; most skills are $19.
On this page
- What is a Claude skills marketplace?
- What is actually inside a skill file?
- Why a file beats a prompt you paste every time
- What can you buy in one?
- How do you install a skill?
- Where to buy Claude skills: four sources
- How do you tell a good skill pack from a padded one?
- Skills, Projects, or a Custom GPT?
- What does it cost?
- Find your Claude skill by role
- Where to go next
What is a Claude skills marketplace?
It is a store that sells behaviour rather than software. Nothing installs on your machine, nothing runs in the background, and there is no account to connect. You buy a file, hand it to Claude, and Claude changes how it works.
The comparison people reach for is an app store. It is closer to hiring: you are not adding a feature to Claude, you are giving it a job description, a method, and a standard for what finished work looks like.
What is actually inside a skill file?
Unzip one and there is remarkably little. That is the point.
-
A
SKILL.mdfile at the root of the folder. Plain Markdown. You can open it in TextEdit or Notepad and read every word before you let it near your work. - A short header with a name and a description. The description is the part most buyers ignore and the part that decides everything: it is what Claude checks to know whether this skill applies to what you just asked. A sharp description means the skill fires exactly when you need it. A woolly one means it either never triggers or triggers constantly.
- The method itself. How the role thinks, what it asks before it starts, the order it works in, the format it delivers in, and the things it refuses to do.
-
A
resources/folder, on the better packs. Usually an example of finished output, sometimes templates or checklists the skill pulls in when it needs them.
No binaries, no installer, no telemetry. If a marketplace will not show you what is inside before you buy, that is worth noticing.
Why a file beats a prompt you paste every time
A pasted prompt is one message competing with every message that comes after it. Around turn fifteen of a long chat, the careful instructions you wrote at the start are simply older context, and the answers start sliding back toward generic.
A skill sits outside the conversation. Claude re-opens it when the task matches, so the instruction is as loud on message forty as it was on message one. You also stop paying the tax of finding the prompt, pasting the prompt, and re-explaining the three things you always have to re-explain.
Topic clusters, a 90-day editorial calendar, brand voice rules and campaign logic, written out as a method Claude follows on every request instead of a prompt you retype.
View Lena →What can you buy in one?
Four product types, and they are not interchangeable. Live counts from the KissMySkills catalogue:
- Skills - over 2,000 files, $19 each. One role, one method. This is the main thing.
- Prompt packs - 60+ packs, from $9. A set of ready prompts for one task, with no method and no persona attached; you drive. Single-purpose generators and full role libraries, like Sales & Marketing, are $9.
- Agents - 100+ files, $39 each. Multi-step workflows that carry a task from brief to deliverable rather than answering one question at a time.
- Bundles. Department or full-catalogue packages, priced under the sum of their parts. A five-agent department bundle is $99; the Everything Bundle is $119 for all 55 agents.
If you want to see what a skill file actually does before spending anything, the free tools page runs around fifty generators in the browser - the same skill files, nothing stored, no account.
How do you install a skill?
Two routes. The first is the native Claude feature; the second works on any assistant and any plan.
Method 1: upload it to Claude
Bought from KissMySkills with a Library subscription? Skip the upload. Add KissMySkills once as a connector (Customize → Connectors → + → Add custom connector, URL https://mcp.kissmyskills.com/mcp), sign in with your email and ask for any skill by name. Nothing to download; setup for Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex and Cursor is on the connector page. The steps below are for a single .skill file, which Claude takes as it is.
- Open the Claude desktop app and find Customize in the left sidebar.
- Click Skills, then the + button.
- Upload the ZIP. Claude reads the
SKILL.mdat the root and shows you a summary of what it does. - Toggle the skill on in the list.
- Ask for the work. Claude loads the skill when your request matches its description.
Skills need code execution enabled, under Settings → Capabilities. Anthropic's help centre currently lists Skills on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise, while its Academy tutorial lists Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise - so if you are on the free plan, check Settings → Capabilities for your own account rather than taking either page's word for it. In Claude Code, skip the interface entirely and unzip into ~/.claude/skills/<name>/, then run /skills to confirm it loaded.
Method 2: paste it
Where there is no Skills menu, or in ChatGPT or Gemini, open the SKILL.md, copy everything, and paste it into custom instructions or project instructions. You lose automatic triggering; you keep the method. Full walkthrough with troubleshooting: how to install a Claude skill.
Where to buy Claude skills: four sources
There is no single Claude skills directory. There are four kinds of source, and each trades something different.
- Anthropic's own skills. A small built-in set for document work (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) plus published examples. The best place to see what a well-written skill looks like; deliberately narrow, not a library of job roles.
- Open source repositories on GitHub. The closest thing to a free library. Most of it is unmaintained, coverage clusters around what developers wanted for themselves, and you carry the whole quality check. Read a free skill the way you would read a contractor's method statement: it is instructions you hand to an agent that then acts in your name.
- Paid marketplaces. The same Markdown format, but edited: someone decided which roles are worth covering, wrote each one to a standard and takes responsibility if it does not work. The comparison of seven Claude skills marketplaces covers price and catalogue size side by side.
- Building your own. Often the best skill for your job is the one that encodes how you work. Pick one narrow job, write the description line first, write the method rather than a personality, add one example of finished output. Step by step: how to create a Claude skill.
To choose between them, ask four questions in this order. How specific is the job? Common technical work is well covered for free; the narrower the role, the sooner free coverage runs out. What is an hour of your time worth? Judging ten community files takes an afternoon. Who carries the risk if the output is wrong? For client-facing or regulated work, prefer a source with an owner and a version. Can you see inside before you commit? Any source, free or paid, that will not show you the method before you download is asking you to trust text you have not read.
The people who get the most out of skills do not collect them. They keep five to ten switched on, covering the jobs they actually repeat. Forty installed skills is worse than six: every extra description competes for the same request.
How do you tell a good skill pack from a padded one?
Most disappointing skill files fail the same four ways.
- Read the description line before anything else. "Helps with marketing" will either never trigger or trigger on everything. "Use when writing or reviewing cold outbound email sequences" tells Claude precisely when to wake up.
- Look for a method, not a mood. Plenty of files spend 400 words describing a personality and never say what the thing produces. If you cannot tell what lands on your screen when you use it, neither can Claude.
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Check for an example of finished output. A pack that ships
resources/example-output.mdis showing you the deliverable before you pay. A pack that does not is asking you to guess. - Match it to the job title, not the department. A single "Finance" skill covering FP&A, controllership, treasury and audit is four half-answers. A CFO skill and a controller skill are two right ones.
One job title, four named deliverables: keyword clusters, technical audits, content briefs and competitor gap analysis. You know what comes out before you buy it.
View Serge →Skills, Projects, or a Custom GPT?
They solve different problems and people mix them up constantly.
- A Project is a container for context: your documents, your history, one set of instructions. Right when the work needs to remember your company.
- A skill is a method Claude picks up when the task matches, in any chat, without moving your work into a container. Right when the work needs expertise, not memory.
- A Custom GPT is closest to a skill, but it lives inside ChatGPT and you talk to it instead of your normal assistant. A skill file works in either, because it is just text.
The practical answer is usually both: a Project for the account you are working on, and skills for the crafts you keep needing inside it. The full comparison, including what each one costs to keep, is in Claude skills vs custom GPTs.
What does it cost?
Skills are $19 and agents are $39. Prompt packs are $9, from a single-purpose generator to a full role library. Bundles are priced under the sum of their parts: five agents for one department is $99, and the Everything Bundle is $119 against a $2,145 list. Everything is an instant download with a 30-day money-back guarantee. There is no subscription; the file you buy keeps working whether or not you ever come back.
The honest caveat: a skill file does not make a worse model better. It makes a good model consistent. If the underlying answer would have been wrong, a skill will give you the same wrong answer in a tidier format.
In summary
A skill file is a readable Markdown document that gives Claude one job and one method, uploaded through Customize → Skills in about three minutes. Read the description line before you buy, look for a method rather than a personality, and check whether the pack ships an example of its finished output. Content and campaigns: Lena - Content Marketing Manager. Rankings and audits: Serge - SEO Specialist. Both $19, working in Claude, ChatGPT or any AI chat, no coding, 30-day money-back guarantee.
Find your Claude skill by role
These role guides break down which skills fit each job, with links to every collection:
- AI marketing skills - strategy, content, SEO, email and ads.
- AI sales skills - outreach, discovery, objections and proposals.
- AI coding skills - review, debugging, documentation and DevOps.
- AI finance and legal skills - analysis, budgeting and contract review.
- AI business skills - operations, strategy, project management and reporting.
- AI content and creative skills - articles, scripts and social.
Or browse the whole catalogue and buy instantly: all Claude skills by role.
If you want the mechanics rather than the shopping, the full explainer lives on what Claude skills are and how to install them.
Everything Bundle - All 55 AI Agents
Every agent in the catalogue in one download - marketing, sales, finance, legal, recruiting, coding and operations. $2,145 bought one at a time.
KissMySkills is a marketplace of 1,800+ AI skills, 80+ prompt packs, 100+ agents & free tools for Claude, ChatGPT & any AI chat. 30-day money-back guarantee.