Claude skills not showing up or not being used: how to fix it

Check in this order on claude.ai

1. Code execution. On Free, Pro, Max and Ultra: Settings > Capabilities, Code execution and file creation on. On Team and Enterprise an Owner turns on code execution and Skills in Organization settings > Plugins & skills, Policy tab.
2. The toggle. Customize > Skills: the skill must be switched on. A skill a colleague shared stays greyed out until you turn it on. A skill a colleague published to the organization isn't in your list until you install it: in Customize, click +, open the Skills tab, find it under Organization skills and click Install.
3. The upload. The .zip must hold a SKILL.md with a name and a description in its frontmatter. To see what a .zip or .skill file holds before you upload it, open it in the free .skill file viewer, which checks the name, the description and the folder. On Team and Enterprise, if there's no option to create or upload a skill, an Owner has turned skill creation off for users.
4. The description. It should start with what the skill does and say when to use it, under 200 characters.
5. The request. Ask for it by name once, such as "Use my client-reply skill", to confirm it works.

From Anthropic's help, read 5 November 2026. A skill greyed out for everyone usually means code execution is off at the organization level.

Check these in Claude Code

From Claude Code's skills docs, read 5 November 2026, 23:08 JST.

A worked example: the skill nobody's Claude used

Illustration: a made-up business. A sales team's Owner provisions a "Proposal" skill on Claude Team, and nobody's Claude uses it. She checks in order:

1. It's on for everyone in Customize > Skills, and code execution is on in the policy.
2. The description says only "Proposal helper", so she rewrites it: "Drafts a sales proposal from call notes: problem, offer, price and next step. Use when someone asks for a proposal or a quote."
3. She asks once by name to check it, and from then on Claude picks it up when someone asks for a proposal.

She also puts it in the team's pod for the two partners who use ChatGPT, where they ask for it by name the first time.

AI Skill Pod is this site's product. Pod pricing: Free up to 3 members and 10 skills; Team $5 per seat a month from 3 seats.

Next step: share skills without a Team plan

Once a skill works, the next question is getting it to colleagues. Share Claude skills without a Team plan (Pro, Max) covers the ways.

Questions

Why isn't my skill showing up in Claude?

Check, in order: that code execution is on (in Settings > Capabilities, or in the organization's policy on Team and Enterprise), that the skill is switched on in Customize > Skills, and that the upload was a .zip with a SKILL.md inside. A greyed-out skill can mean code execution is off for the organization, or, for a shared skill, that you haven't turned it on yet.

Why doesn't Claude use my skill even though it's on?

Usually the description. Claude picks a skill by its description, so it has to say what the skill does and when to use it, in the words people actually type. Anthropic's help also suggests asking for the skill by name, such as "Use my brand guidelines skill".

Why doesn't Claude Code see my skill?

Check that it sits at ~/.claude/skills//SKILL.md or .claude/skills//SKILL.md, ask "What skills are available?", and try /skill-name. If /skill-name works but Claude never picks it, the frontmatter may be malformed: run claude plugin validate on the folder or start Claude Code with --debug.