Export skills and agents for Claude Code, Copilot and Codex
· 3 min read
You wrote a skill or an agent once. Now you want it to work in Claude Code, GitHub Copilot and OpenAI Codex. Each tool looks in different folders, and keeping three copies in sync is exactly the kind of chore that gets skipped. This guide shows where each tool looks and how to export one set of files that covers them.
Where each tool looks
As of October 2026, these are the folders the tools read:
| Tool | Skills | Agents |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | .claude/skills/ |
.claude/agents/ |
| GitHub Copilot (VS Code) | .github/skills/, .claude/skills/ and .agents/skills/ |
.github/agents/ and .claude/agents/ |
| OpenAI Codex | .agents/skills/ |
.codex/agents/ as TOML files |
Tools change quickly, so check each tool’s documentation if something does not load.
One copy, with pointers
The simplest safe approach is to keep a single copy of every skill and agent where most of your tools already read it, and add a tiny pointer file only where a tool cannot see that folder. The pointer holds the name, the description and where the real instructions are, never the instructions themselves, so there is still one place to edit.
For the combinations people ask about, the layout is:
| Tools you use | Skills (the one copy) | Agents (the one copy) | Pointers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | .claude/skills/ |
.claude/agents/ |
none |
| GitHub Copilot | .github/skills/ |
.claude/agents/ |
none |
| Codex | .agents/skills/ |
.codex/agents/ (TOML) |
none |
| Claude Code and Copilot | .claude/skills/ |
.claude/agents/ |
none |
| Copilot and Codex | .agents/skills/ |
.claude/agents/ |
.codex/agents/ |
| Claude Code and Codex | .agents/skills/ |
.claude/agents/ |
.claude/skills/ (skills), .codex/agents/ |
Pointers are plain files, not symlinks, because the zip extraction built into Windows does not restore symlinks.
Export from Skill Builder
- Open your project in Skill Builder and choose Export.
- Pick Ready for your project and tick the AI tools you use.
- Choose Download zip. The zip contains the folders above, a
SKILL-BUILDER.mdwith the steps (it is not calledREADME.md, so it never replaces your own), and aSHA256SUMSfile. - Copy everything in the zip into the root of your project.
On a Mac, copy with Terminal, because Finder hides folders that start with a dot and can replace a folder such as .github instead of merging into it:
cp -R ./. /path/to/your/project/
On Windows, drag the folders in File Explorer, which merges them, or run robocopy . "C:\path\to\project" /E.
Check the copy
To confirm nothing changed since the export, run this in the folder you extracted:
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS
On macOS use shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS.
Safety checks
An export is scanned before it leaves the app. A zip is refused if the scan finds a secret or a dangerous command, and the message names the file and the reason, never the value. Skills can include scripts; Skill Builder stores and exports them as text and never runs them. Review any skill you did not write before you install it in an AI tool, including its scripts.
Other export formats
- Plain folders give you
skills/andagents/with a README that says where to copy them for each tool. - Project file is a single
.skill-builder.jsonwith the project and its saved versions. It is for backing up or moving a project, not for AI tools; Import project restores it.
Next steps
New to writing these files? Read how to write a SKILL.md and skills versus agents, then set up AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md for the project as a whole.