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Who this is for: Anyone who uses Claude Desktop in Claude for Government. The last section is for administrators who distribute skills to members.
A skill is a set of instructions, with optional scripts and resources, that Claude loads when a task matches it, so you can teach Claude a workflow once and reuse it. See the Skills overview for how skills work.

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Where skills come from

In Claude for Government, your skills come from three places:
  • Skills you create yourself, which are stored on your device.
  • Skills bundled in plugins your administrators provision, which arrive with the plugin as described in Plugins in Claude Desktop.
  • Skills that ship with Claude Desktop for common document tasks, such as working with spreadsheets and presentations, which Claude loads automatically when a task calls for them.

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Create and manage skills

Open Customize in the sidebar, then Skills, to see your skills and turn any of them on or off. Select Add skill, then choose Create with Claude to build one with Claude’s help, Write skill instructions to write it yourself, or Upload a skill to add a skill file you have. You can also ask Claude to save a workflow as a skill while you work on a task. The skill authoring guide describes the file format for skills you write by hand. Open a skill you created to rename or delete it. Skills you create are stored on your device, so they are available only there. If your organization restricts skill creation through device managed configuration, the options to create and upload skills are hidden, and Claude does not offer to create or update skills in your conversations.

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Skills for administrators

The admin portal does not currently have a skills view or per-skill controls, so there is no setting that allows, blocks, or distributes a skill on its own. To distribute skills to the members you manage, bundle them in a plugin, which can be as small as the skill plus a plugin manifest, and provision it on the Plugins card, as described in Manage plugins and connectors. A plugin set to Auto-install delivers its skills to every member without the member doing anything. A skill you distribute this way is managed through the plugin that carries it, so to change or retire the skill, update or remove the plugin.