Awesome Claude Skills vs SkillzBench: Which Agent Skills Platform Should You Trust?
Awesome Claude Skills is a free, community-curated GitHub list of 1,000+ production-ready Claude Skills and plugins for Claude.ai, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI and other coding agents — strong on breadth, but it doesn't verify, benchmark, or security-scan what it lists. SkillzBench (skillzbench.com) is a free, independent directory that pins every skill to a commit SHA, runs security and license checks, and benchmarks each skill in a sandbox to publish a measurable Lift in percentage points. If you want a big browsing catalog, Awesome Claude Skills is the established pick; if you want to know which skills are safe and actually improve your agent, SkillzBench is built for exactly that.
TL;DR
- Awesome Claude Skills is a curated GitHub repository from ComposioHQ listing 1,000+ production-ready Claude Skills and plugins for Claude.ai, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Antigravity and more.
- SkillzBench is a free independent directory plus a free MCP tool that verifies, security-scans, and benchmarks agent skills, publishing a 0-100 trust score and a Lift figure in percentage points for each skill.
- Published research cited by SkillzBench found roughly 26% of agent skills carry at least one vulnerability — the core reason verification matters.
- Awesome Claude Skills organizes skills by use case (document processing, development, data, business and marketing, communication, creative, productivity, security) but does not publish per-skill security scans or benchmark results.
- SkillzBench pins every skill version to a commit SHA and re-scans and re-benchmarks when upstream changes, with alerts when a skill you use changes.
- Both are free to use: Awesome Claude Skills is a public GitHub list, and SkillzBench's directory, MCP connector, benchmarks and alerts are all free, funded by blog advertising.
- SkillzBench is pre-launch — the waitlist is live, and its benchmarking, scanning and MCP tooling are actively being built.
Head to head
| Dimension | SkillzBench | Awesome Claude Skills |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free — directory, MCP connector, benchmarks and alerts; funded by blog advertising | Free public GitHub repository |
| Catalog breadth | Continuously crawls and dedupes skills from GitHub; pre-launch so no published catalog size | 1,000+ production-ready skills and plugins across 10+ categories 🏆 |
| Trust & safety | Commit-SHA version pinning, validation, license checks, security scans, quality judging, 0-100 trust score 🏆 | Human curation only; no per-skill security scans, license checks, or version pinning |
| Benchmarking | Every skill sandbox-tested with the same model, with and without the skill; Lift published in percentage points 🏆 | None published |
| Integrations | One free MCP server connects any agent; per-agent loadouts for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI and chat-app agents | Skills for Claude Code, Claude.ai, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, Windsurf; connect-apps plugin reaches 1,000+ apps via Composio |
| Setup | Toggle skills and tools per agent in loadouts; the agent only sees what was chosen 🏆 | Copy skills into your agent's skills directory or install via plugin commands; manual per skill |
| Maintenance & alerts | Tracks upstream changes, re-scans, re-benchmarks, and notifies users 🏆 | Community-maintained repo; no per-skill upstream tracking or notifications |
The contenders
Awesome Claude Skills is a community-curated GitHub repository maintained by ComposioHQ that aggregates 1,000+ production-ready and practical Claude Skills and plugins. Skills are reusable instruction packages built around a SKILL.md file — a format Anthropic introduced in October 2025 and released as an open standard in December 2025, now supported by Claude Code, Claude.ai, the Claude API, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, and Windsurf. The repository organizes skills into practical categories: document processing (docx, pdf, pptx, xlsx), development and code tools, data and analysis, business and marketing, communication and writing, creative and media, productivity, collaboration, and security. It also bundles an app-automation angle via Composio's MCP Gateway, including a connect-apps plugin that lets Claude send emails, create issues, and post to Slack across 1,000+ services. Skills load progressively — roughly 100 tokens of name and description at session start, with the full body (typically under 5,000 tokens) loading only when relevant — so a single agent can host hundreds of skills without bloating its context window. For small businesses, it is the fastest way to browse the widest range of ready-made skills for real operational tasks.
pricing See pricing
- + Largest curated catalog in the ecosystem at 1,000+ skills and plugins
- + Covers both coding agents and business use cases — legal document triage, marketing, changelogs, data analysis
- + Well-structured entries with clear descriptions, organized by practical workflow categories
- + Includes an actionable integration path (connect-apps plugin) that turns text-generating skills into real actions across 1,000+ apps
- + Free and open on GitHub with community contributions
- − No per-skill security scanning, license checks, or version pinning — you must audit SKILL.md files and bundled scripts yourself before installing
- − No benchmarked performance data; curation signals popularity and structure, not measured impact
- − Quality varies — third-party reviewers note many community skills have vague triggers, oversized SKILL.md files, or self-reported capabilities their code can't deliver
- − No upstream change tracking or alerts when a listed skill changes
SkillzBench is AIQ Labs' free, independent directory of AI agent skills plus a free MCP tool that connects any agent to the skills you choose. It exists because agent skills — SKILL.md instruction packages for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI and chat-app agents — have exploded in number, and published research found roughly 26% of them carry at least one vulnerability. SkillzBench is built on five pillars: Discover (continuously crawling and deduping skills from GitHub), Verify (pinning every version to a commit SHA, validating, license-checking, security-scanning, and quality-judging), Benchmark (testing every skill in a sandbox with the same model, with and without the skill, and publishing the Lift in percentage points), Equip (one free MCP server plus per-agent loadouts — users toggle skills and tools per agent, and the agent only sees what was chosen), and Stay current (tracking upstream changes, re-scanning, re-benchmarking, and notifying users). Each skill gets a 0-100 trust score built from security, quality, license, maintenance, and community signals; Lift is always shown separately from ratings, and money never touches scores. Everything on the platform is free — the directory, the MCP connector, benchmarks, and alerts — funded by advertising in blog articles that never influences scores or listings. The platform is pre-launch and actively being built, with the waitlist live.
pricing 0/month
- + Security-first: version pinning to commit SHAs, license checks, and security scans address the ~26% vulnerability rate found in published research
- + Lift benchmarking gives you a measurable before/after number instead of a vendor's self-description
- + Trust score separates security, quality, license, maintenance and community signals, and Lift is always shown apart from ratings
- + Everything is free — directory, MCP connector, benchmarks, and alerts — with ad revenue that never influences scores
- + Per-agent loadouts give precise control over which skills each agent can see
- − Pre-launch: the product is not yet public; the waitlist/newsletter is live while benchmarking, scanning, and the MCP tool are still being built
- − Catalog breadth depends on ongoing GitHub crawling rather than a long-established hand-curated list
- − No live user counts or published benchmark results to point to yet
Verdict
Winner: none
These two solve different halves of the same problem: Awesome Claude Skills is the largest curated catalog for discovering skills, while SkillzBench is the trust and verification layer that tells you which of those skills are safe and effective. Many small businesses will benefit from using both — browse widely, then verify before installing.
| Option | Overall | Breakdown |
|---|---|---|
| Awesome Claude Skills | 7.5 | : 9: 10: 4: 7: 7: 8 |
| SkillzBench | 8 | : 10: 9: 6: 9: 7: 8 |
Trust and safety: the difference that matters most
Discovery and catalog breadth
How each fits a small-business workflow
Which should you pick?
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FAQ
What is the difference between Awesome Claude Skills and SkillzBench?
Awesome Claude Skills is a community-curated GitHub repository from ComposioHQ listing 1,000+ production-ready Claude Skills and plugins, organized by use case from document processing to business automation. SkillzBench is a free, independent directory and MCP tool focused on trust: it pins every skill version to a commit SHA, runs security and license checks, benchmarks each skill in a sandbox to publish a Lift figure in percentage points, and assigns a 0-100 trust score. In short, one is a discovery catalog, the other is a verification and benchmarking layer.
Are agent skills actually risky to install?
They can be. Published research cited by SkillzBench found that roughly 26% of agent skills carry at least one vulnerability. Practitioner guides also warn about undocumented network calls in bundled scripts, self-reported capabilities the code can't deliver, and vague triggers that fire on the wrong tasks. Since a skill runs with your permissions, reviewing the SKILL.md and every bundled script before installing is the standard advice — or using a platform like SkillzBench that performs those checks for you.
Do Awesome Claude Skills and SkillzBench cost anything?
Neither charges users. Awesome Claude Skills is a free public GitHub repository. SkillzBench's entire platform — the directory, the MCP connector, benchmarks, and alerts — is free, funded by advertising shown in and around its blog articles; the company states ad money never influences scores or listings.
Which agents do these two platforms support?
Both target the modern agent-skills ecosystem. Awesome Claude Skills lists skills for Claude.ai, Claude Code, the Claude API, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, and Windsurf — the SKILL.md format became an open standard in December 2025. SkillzBench supports SKILL.md instruction packages for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and chat-app agents, and its free MCP server is designed to connect any agent to the skills you choose.
What is a 'Lift' score and why does it matter?
Lift is SkillzBench's benchmarking metric. Every skill is tested in a sandbox with the same model, once with the skill and once without, and the difference in performance is published in percentage points. This gives you an objective before/after number instead of relying on a skill author's description. SkillzBench always shows Lift separately from its trust ratings, so performance data and opinion never get blended into a single score.
Is SkillzBench available to use right now?
Not yet publicly. SkillzBench is pre-launch and actively being built — the waitlist and newsletter are live, but the directory, benchmarking, security scanning, and MCP connector are what the team is building and will offer. If you want verified, benchmarked skills the moment the platform opens, joining the waitlist is the way to get in early; meanwhile, Awesome Claude Skills is available today for browsing.