Choose Skills, Agents, Teams, MCP, or plugins

Purpose#

Use a Skill for reusable instructions, an Agent for a short delegation, a Team for sustained work across real conversations, MCP for external tools, or a plugin for a capability package.

Team is distinct from channel-bot grouping and requires a loadable team Skill and Sessions tools in the current conversation.

Before you start#

Write down one need and its allowed access. If ordinary chat can do the task, complete it once before adding extensions.

Open Plugins in the left sidebar to manage Plugins, Skills, and MCP on one page. Choose a project or Personal · all projects before making changes. Personal capabilities can still be inherited by projects; check each entry’s source and scope.

For an existing local Skill, open Skills → its details → Use skill. Check the destination project, add your request to the prepared conversation draft, then send. Creating a draft does not execute the Skill. Use @Skill when you want to create a new reusable workflow.

Inspect built-in skills and task details

Type / in the conversation composer to see commands and skills available to that runtime. In the right-hand skills panel, Built into Claude Code is a separate, read-only group; project and personal skills keep their own sources. A same-named local skill takes precedence, so a built-in entry may be hidden rather than duplicated. /list-agents and /autocompact are command entries whose availability depends on the runtime; seeing an entry does not prove it has executed.

For example, locate an available skill in /, inspect its source, and invoke it with a small read-only request. If you delegate a subtask, open its details to inspect the recorded model and reasoning effort when available, then review its actual result.

The rules panel can show a project's AGENTS.md only when neither root CLAUDE.md nor .claude/CLAUDE.md exists. It is a fallback, not an additional rule file loaded alongside those two.

First choice#

What you need	Start with
Repeat a checklist	Skill
Delegate a short, independent task	Agent
Divide file ownership across real conversations that can continue working	Team
Query external data or tools	MCP
Install an existing extension package	Plugin

1. For “check documentation links each time,” start with @Skill.
2. Specify the project scope, steps, and output. Ask it to report without editing.
3. Save and invoke it once before deciding whether more tools or roles are needed.

Confirm success#

The extension loads from the right scope, its tools work, and its result meets your criteria. A definition file or saved configuration does not prove successful execution.

Common problems#

• Missing entry: check the project, source, and enabled state.
• Skill absent from /: it may be intended for automatic invocation only.
• Duplicate capabilities: identify their sources and disable duplicates before testing.

Next steps#

Continue with Skills, Agents, Teams, or MCP. Neither a role nor an ownership list creates filesystem isolation; define scope and review actual changes.