Lesson 4 - Deploying and Sharing Skills
Learn the exact directories each platform watches, how precedence works when skills share a name, and how to promote skills from personal sandboxes to shared repositories safely.
Duration: 1.5-2 hours
Learning Objectives
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
- ✓Know the canonical paths for personal and project skills across major AI tools.
- ✓Promote a personal skill into a project repository with git-based review.
- ✓Explain priority resolution when duplicate skill names exist in multiple locations.
- ✓Evaluate community skills for security and quality before installing.
Videos
Personal Skills: Your Private Toolkit
Where to store skills that are just for you — your personal AI configuration that follows you across every project.
Duration: 7 minutes
Video coming soon
Project Skills: Sharing with Your Team via Git
Promote a skill from personal to project-level so everyone on the team benefits. Enforce review through pull requests.
Duration: 10 minutes
Video coming soon
Community Skills: Finding and Evaluating Shared Skills
How to discover community-built skills, evaluate them for safety, and install them responsibly.
Duration: 6 minutes
Video coming soon
Key Concepts
Directory Cheat Sheet
Priority Resolution: What Wins When Names Clash
Promotion Workflow: Personal → Project
Security Checklist for Community Skills
Common Mistakes & Pitfalls
❌ Putting personal preferences in project skills
Project skills should reflect team conventions, not individual taste. Keep your personal quirks (favorite formatting, custom abbreviations) in personal skills.
❌ Installing community skills without reading them
Always read SKILL.md and inspect scripts/ before installing. A skill with 'rm -rf' in a script could delete your files.
❌ Forgetting to commit and push skill changes
Project skills only reach your team through git. Edit → commit → push. If you skip push, nobody else gets the update.
❌ Using the wrong directory path for your tool
Each tool has specific paths. .claude/skills/ works for Claude Code but may not be discovered by Gemini CLI. Check the cheat sheet.
❌ Not removing the personal copy after promotion
If both personal and project versions exist, the project version wins. But having two copies creates confusion about which to edit. Clean up after promoting.
Exercises
Exercise 1: Path Audit
10 minutesVerify that the personal and project skill directories exist on your machine. Create any missing directories.
Expected Output:
Verified directory paths plus commands used to create any missing ones.
Success Criteria:
- •Confirmed the personal skill directory exists for your primary AI tool.
- •Confirmed the project skill directory exists (or created it).
- •Noted the exact paths for your OS and tool combination.
Exercise 2: Promote Your Skill to Project Level
20 minutesMove your skill from personal to project directory, commit it to git, and verify it still works from the project location.
Expected Output:
A git commit containing your skill in the project skills directory.
Success Criteria:
- •Skill copied to the correct project directory.
- •Committed to git with a descriptive message.
- •AI tool recognizes the skill from the project directory.
- •Tested the skill still works after relocation.
Exercise 3: Community Skill Evaluation
20 minutesFind a community skill, run the security checklist, and write a one-paragraph evaluation: adopt, fork, or reject.
Expected Output:
Completed security checklist plus your decision with justification.
Success Criteria:
- •Found a community skill and noted the source URL + commit hash.
- •Completed all items on the security checklist.
- •Wrote a clear decision (adopt/fork/reject) with reasoning.
- •If adopted, installed to personal directory and tested.
Lesson Reflection
Take a moment to reflect on what you've learned:
- 1. Is your skill more of a personal preference or a team convention? Which tier does it belong at?
- 2. If your team had a shared skills library, which 3 skills would save the most collective time?
- 3. Have you ever wished a colleague followed the same process you do? That's a project skill waiting to be written.
- 4. What would your security checklist look like for evaluating skills in a regulated industry?