AGENT SKILLS ECONOMY
Claude Skills Marketplace: Where Skills Actually Live in 2026
Three different things get called "the Claude skills marketplace" — Anthropic's official channels, the plugin marketplaces built into Claude Code, and a pile of third-party directories that disagree on everything, including how many skills exist. Here is the map, plus where creators actually get paid — including the VibeFuse marketplace, which pays an 80% revenue share on widgets, skills, and styling packs from day one.
Why the term is a mess (and what each thing actually is)
Anthropic shipped the SKILL.md open standard in December 2025, and the ecosystem started building on it in early 2026. "Claude skills marketplace" gets applied to three overlapping things, and mixing them up is how people end up publishing to a scraper index thinking they've shipped a product.
| What people mean | What it actually is | Who runs it |
|---|---|---|
| "The official marketplace" | There is no App Store-style skills storefront. Anthropic maintains first-party skills (the anthropics/skills repo, built-ins in the Claude apps) and the Claude Marketplace — which sells business software, not skills |
Anthropic |
| Plugin marketplaces | Git repos with a .claude-plugin/marketplace.json — any repo can become one; skills ship inside plugins. This is the official, supported distribution path |
Anyone (Anthropic maintains reference repos) |
| Third-party directories | Web catalogs that index SKILL.md files from public GitHub — mostly free, no payment rails | SkillsMP, claudemarketplaces.com, SkillHub, LobeHub, community lists |
As of mid-2026 the official answer to "where do I browse and install Claude skills" is the plugin marketplace system plus the first-party repo — not a consumer storefront with ratings and a checkout. Several 2026 posts report an official paid-skills store launching; Anthropic's own product pages don't confirm one. Treat any single-source launch claim as unverified until it appears in Anthropic's docs.
The official channels: what Anthropic actually runs
Three first-party surfaces matter, and none of them is a store:
- The
anthropics/skillsrepo — a deliberately small set of first-party skills (document creation for docx/pdf/pptx/xlsx, skill-creator, mcp-builder, brand guidelines, slack-formatter), maintained and tested by Anthropic. It doubles as the canonical example of a well-formed skill and as a marketplace you can register inside Claude Code. - Built-in skills in the Claude apps — document handling, data analysis, and file conversion ship with Claude itself; the same skill runs across Claude.ai, Claude Code, and the API unmodified.
- The Claude Marketplace — despite the name, this is Anthropic's business marketplace for third-party cloud services and software, not a place to shop for skills. Searching it for skills is the most common wrong turn.
The Agent Skills standard underneath all of it is open: a skill is a folder with a
SKILL.md (YAML frontmatter plus Markdown instructions, optional bundled scripts),
and OpenAI's Codex CLI adopted the same format — so a skill you publish travels across
agents that read SKILL.md.
Plugin marketplaces: the real distribution primitive
Claude Code's plugin system is how skills actually move at scale. Any Git repository with
a .claude-plugin/marketplace.json file becomes a marketplace: users add it with
/plugin marketplace add, browse the discover list, and install plugins — which
bundle skills, agents, hooks, MCP servers, or LSP servers. Skills inside an installed
plugin load automatically from the plugin's skills/ directory, no extra step.
Two mechanics worth knowing from the official docs. Versioning is manifest-driven: users
only receive updates when you bump the version field in the plugin manifest
(or, if you omit it, every commit pushes updates). And the manual route never stops
working — copying a skill folder into ~/.claude/skills/ (global) or your
project's .claude/skills/ (repo-scoped) installs it with no marketplace at
all. That's why the ecosystem fragmented so fast: the install bar is a file copy, and
thousands of skills live in personal GitHub repos whose README says exactly that.
For sellers, the takeaway: distribution and payment are different problems. A GitHub repo plus directory listings gets you installs; it does not get you income.
The third-party directory landscape
| Directory | Scale claim | Curation | Payouts |
|---|---|---|---|
| SkillsMP | 1.3M+ indexed skills (launched May 2026; scraped from public GitHub) | Automated scraper + quality filter, not review | None — free index |
| claudemarketplaces.com | Thousands of skills plus a directory-of-directories (~2,500 sub-marketplaces) | Human-browsable, ranked by installs and stars | None |
| SkillHub | ~7,000 skills | Human-picked collections (e.g. "TDD starter pack") | Team plan ~$12/seat/mo — for teams, not seller payouts |
| skills.sh (Vercel) | Open directory with public install-count leaderboard | SKILL.md packages via npx | None — discovery only |
| awesome-claude-skills lists | A few hundred curated links | Community-maintained GitHub lists | None |
The count claims disagree wildly — 1.3 million vs 7,000 vs 4,200 — because nobody owns the definition. Scraper indexes count every GitHub repo containing a SKILL.md somewhere; curated catalogs count listings a human accepted. When you see a headline number, ask what was counted.
Directory figures compiled September 2026 from the platforms' own published counts; they move month to month.
Where Claude skill creators actually get paid
Here is the part most guides skip: the official channels don't pay creators. Anthropic's first-party repo and the plugin marketplace system are free distribution — your reward is installs and reputation. The GPT Store taught this generation of builders the lesson the hard way: a promised revenue program is not a payout (WIRED reported in 2024 that most GPT builders, including creators with millions of conversations, had earned nothing). Income requires a marketplace with a published, structural revenue share:
| Where you sell | Creator keeps | Format |
|---|---|---|
| VibeFuse Marketplace | 80% flat — every sale, no tiers | Canvas widgets, SKILL.md skills, styling packs |
| AgentPowers | 85% (fees absorbed) | Markdown skills for .claude/skills/ |
| Agensi | 70% flat (platform handles VAT) | SKILL.md bundles, security-scanned, cross-agent |
| MCP marketplaces (MCPize, Apify) | 80–85% typical, per-call pricing | MCP servers — the adjacent category to skills |
Two structural notes. First, SKILL.md is cross-agent: the same file ships to Claude's ecosystem and loads in OpenAI Codex CLI and other adopters, so a listing on a cross-agent marketplace follows your work wherever agents go. Second, a SKILL.md file is invisible until an agent loads it — a widget is demonstrable, because buyers see the live component on a canvas before they buy.
That second point is why the VibeFuse marketplace exists at all: VibeFuse is the first ever free widget-based AI harness, an open-source marketplace where creators make money selling widgets, skills, and styling packs with revenue share for creators — 80% flat, published, buyers installing in one click inside the free harness. Local/offline processing, works in any app, and your buyers never pay just to try your work.
How to install a Claude skill today
- From a plugin marketplace:
/plugin marketplace add <repo>in Claude Code, then install from the plugin menu - From the first-party repo: register
anthropics/skillsas a marketplace and install its bundles — or copy folders straight out of it - Manually: copy the skill folder into
~/.claude/skills/(global) or.claude/skills/(project) — no command needed
All three routes end in the same place: Claude resolves the skill from your skills directories and loads it when a request matches. Read a skill before installing it regardless of source — a SKILL.md can carry scripts, and the scraper indexes do not review what they list.
- ✓ 80% flat creator payouts
- ✓ Widgets + skills + styling packs
- ✓ Buyers install in one click
- ✓ Free harness for buyers
Explore VibeFuse & harness guides
- Harness Guide
- Free Coding Tools
- AI Coding Agent Desktop
- Free Voice Transcription
- Free Text to Speech
- VibeFuse Product
- Widget Marketplace
- Download Free
- VibeFuse Docs
- Shareable AI Widgets
- Shareable AI Skills
- MCP Tools
- AI Agent Harness
- Harness Engineering
- HyperFrames Video
- Skill Seekers
- Sell AI Skills
- AI Skills Marketplace Compared
- Cursor Alternative
- Local Whisper + Piper
- Custom AI Dashboard
- Community Hub
Claude skills marketplace FAQ
Is there an official Claude skills marketplace?
Not an App Store-style storefront. Anthropic maintains first-party skills in the anthropics/skills GitHub repo, ships built-in skills with the Claude apps, and runs the Claude Marketplace — which sells business software, not skills. The official, supported way to distribute skills is Claude Code plugin marketplaces: any Git repo with a .claude-plugin/marketplace.json file.
Where do I find and install Claude skills?
Three routes. Add a plugin marketplace with /plugin marketplace add <repo> in Claude Code and install from the plugin menu. Register the anthropics/skills repo as a marketplace to get Anthropic's first-party bundles. Or copy a skill folder into ~/.claude/skills/ (global) or .claude/skills/ (project) — no command needed. All three end with the skill loading when a request matches.
What is SkillsMP and are its numbers real?
SkillsMP is a third-party directory that launched in May 2026 claiming 1.3M+ skills indexed from public GitHub. It is a scraper index with a quality filter, not a review process — the count reflects how many repos contain a SKILL.md, not how many useful skills exist. Curated catalogs like SkillHub (~7,000) or claudemarketplaces.com are smaller but human-browsable. None of the directories pay creators.
Can I make money selling Claude skills?
Not through Anthropic's own channels — the first-party repo and plugin marketplaces are free distribution. Income requires a paid marketplace with a published revenue share: the VibeFuse marketplace pays a flat 80% on widgets, skills, and styling packs, AgentPowers pays 85%, Agensi pays 70%. Remember the GPT Store lesson: a promised revenue program is not a payout — only a published percentage is.
What is a SKILL.md file?
The open Agent Skills standard Anthropic published in December 2025. A skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter (name, description, optional fields like allowed-tools) followed by Markdown instructions, plus optional bundled scripts. OpenAI's Codex CLI adopted the same format, so skills are portable across agents that read SKILL.md.
Do I need a plugin marketplace to share a skill?
No. The manual route is a folder copy into the skills directory, and thousands of skills are shared exactly that way via GitHub READMEs. A plugin marketplace adds discovery, version tracking, and automatic updates for users — worth it once you maintain multiple skills or ship updates regularly.