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Claude Cowork guide · Extending it

Claude Cowork plugins and Skills: teaching it how you work.

Out of the box, Cowork is capable but generic. Skills, connectors, and plugins are how it learns your formats, your systems, and your rules. Here is what each one is, when to build versus install, and how to keep the whole thing governed.

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Scott Midgley
By Chief Information Officer & Co-Founder

20+ years in IT leadership, with Microsoft certifications across productivity, Microsoft 365, and Windows administration.

Article updated August 2026
The short answer

Three pieces, one job.

Skills teach Cowork how your organization does a job. Connectors give it scoped access to where the work lives. Plugins package those together so a team shares one setup instead of everyone building their own.

The reason this matters is simple. A generic assistant produces output your team rewrites. One that knows your funder’s report format, your program names, and your approval rules produces a draft your team edits. That gap is the entire return, and it comes from the organizational knowledge you put in, not from the tool.

Product specifics change often. We track dated changes on the Cowork change log, and Anthropic documents the current options in its official Cowork guide.

The building blocks

Skills, connectors, and plugins

People use these words interchangeably. They are three different things, and the difference decides who owns each one.

Skills

Reusable instructions that teach Cowork how your organization does a specific job.

For example: A grant-report Skill that knows your funder’s format, your program names, and the tone your board expects, so every report starts consistent instead of from scratch.

Anyone can write one. No engineering required.

Connectors

Authorized links to the systems where your work already lives.

For example: Access to a specific SharePoint folder, a shared drive, or a business application, scoped so Cowork sees only what that job needs.

Usually set up once by whoever administers the tool.

Plugins

Packaged bundles that add capability, often combining Skills and connections.

For example: A bundle installed once and shared across a team, so everyone works from the same setup rather than each person configuring their own.

Installed centrally; worth reviewing before rollout.

The decision

Install something existing, or build your own?

Most teams over-build. The test is whether the value comes from knowing your organization.

Install something existing when

  • The job is generic: summarizing, formatting, drafting, converting files.
  • You want to test whether a workflow is worth investing in at all.
  • Nobody on the team wants to own maintaining it.
  • The task changes rarely and does not touch sensitive records.

Build your own when

  • The value is in knowing your organization: your formats, names, rules, and history.
  • The workflow is one you repeat weekly and would notice if it broke.
  • It touches donor, client, member, or patient data and needs scoped access.
  • A generic version produces output your team has to rewrite anyway.
Keeping it safe

Four rules that prevent the mess

The common failure is not a malicious plugin. It is a year later, when nobody can say what is installed or what it can reach.

Decide who can install

The most common failure is not a bad plugin, it is nobody knowing which ones are in use. Name one person who approves additions before anyone installs anything.

Scope access to the job

Grant the narrowest folder or system a Skill needs, not blanket access. Reviewing scope at install time is far easier than auditing it a year later.

Write it down once

A one-page record of what is installed, who approved it, and what it can reach answers most of what an auditor or a funder will ask.

Review on a schedule

Revisit the list quarterly. Remove what nobody uses. Unused access is still access, and it is the part people forget.

In progress

An open Skills library for nonprofits

The jobs that eat nonprofit staff time are remarkably consistent: grant reporting, board packet assembly, donor correspondence, and funder compliance. There is no good reason for every organization to build the same Skills separately.

We are building and open-sourcing a set for exactly those workflows, so a small organization gets the benefit without paying to develop it. If there is a workflow eating your week, tell us and we will look at adding it.

10+ hrs
saved per team, each week
100+
organizations we support
6 min
average response time
Questions

Claude Cowork plugins and Skills, answered

What are Claude Cowork plugins?
Plugins are packaged additions that extend what Claude Cowork can do, typically bundling reusable instructions with authorized access to the systems where your work lives. In practice most teams encounter three related pieces: Skills, which teach Cowork how your organization does a particular job; connectors, which grant scoped access to a folder or application; and plugins, which package these together so a whole team works from the same setup rather than each person configuring their own.
What is the difference between a Skill and a plugin?
A Skill is a set of reusable instructions for one job, and anyone can write one without engineering help. A plugin is a packaged bundle that is installed and shared, and often combines Skills with the connections they need. The practical difference is ownership: a Skill is usually written by the person who does the work, while a plugin is normally installed centrally and should be reviewed before it goes to a whole team.
Do I need a developer to build a Claude Cowork Skill?
No. A Skill is written in plain language, describing how a job should be done, what format the output takes, and what rules apply. The people who write the best ones are usually the people who already do the work, because the value is in the organizational knowledge rather than the code. Development help becomes useful when a workflow needs to connect to a system that is not supported out of the box.
Are Claude Cowork plugins safe to install?
Treat them the way you would treat any software that gets access to your files. The risk is rarely the plugin itself; it is granting broader access than the job requires and then losing track of what is installed. Decide who approves additions, scope each one to the narrowest folder or system it needs, keep a one-page record of what is in use, and review the list quarterly.
Where can I find Claude Cowork plugins and Skills?
Anthropic documents the current options for extending Cowork in its official support material, and the available set changes as the product develops. Because this moves quickly, we track dated changes on our Claude Cowork change log rather than restating specifics here. If you want to know what is worth installing for a particular workflow, that is usually a five-minute conversation rather than a research project.
Can you build custom Skills for our organization?
Yes. Building Skills around a team’s actual workflows is part of how we deploy Cowork, alongside setup, connected tools, training, and a one-page AI policy. For nonprofits and associations we are also developing an open library of Skills for common jobs such as grant reporting and board packet assembly, so smaller organizations get the benefit without paying to build from scratch.
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