What Categories of Skills Are Available in the HumanLayer Marketplace?

All skills in the HumanLayer marketplace currently belong to a single category: productivity.

The humanlayer/skills repository hosts a curated collection of Claude Code plugins designed to automate development workflows. While the marketplace architecture supports categorical classification, every skill listed in the central manifest is uniformly tagged as a productivity plugin.

The Productivity Category

Every skill published to the HumanLayer marketplace is classified under the productivity category. This classification appears in the marketplace manifest file where each plugin entry contains an identical category assignment.

In .claude-plugin/marketplace.json, the master list of available skills defines the category field for every entry. Lines 22 through 71 of this manifest consistently show "category": "productivity" for all currently registered plugins. No alternative categories exist in the repository at this time.

How the Marketplace Defines Categories

The categorization system relies on a centralized JSON schema within the repository root. The manifest serves as the source of truth for skill metadata, including:

• Plugin name: The unique identifier used for invocation
• Category: Currently hardcoded to productivity across all entries
• Entry points: References to the skill implementation directories

This structure allows the Claude Code client to filter and display skills by type, though currently all available options fall under the single productivity classification.

Available Skills in the Productivity Category

The marketplace contains several specialized skills, all classified as productivity tools. Each skill maintains its implementation documentation in a dedicated SKILL.md file within its plugin directory:

• show-me: Generates diagrams and visual explanations via plugins/show-me/skills/show-me/SKILL.md
• design-control-loop: Automates control system design documented in plugins/design-control-loop/skills/design-control-loop/SKILL.md
• narrow-react-prop-types: Refines TypeScript PropTypes definitions located at plugins/narrow-react-prop-types/skills/narrow-react-prop-types/SKILL.md
• build-iterated-agentic-loop: Constructs iterative AI workflows defined in plugins/build-iterated-agentic-loop/skills/build-iterated-agentic-loop/SKILL.md

Despite their diverse functions—from visualization to control engineering to React development—all maintain the "category": "productivity" designation in the marketplace registry.

Invoking Skills from the Marketplace

You interact with productivity-category skills through the Claude Code SDK using the run_skill function. The interface remains consistent regardless of which specific skill you target.

Invoke a skill by passing the plugin_name as listed in marketplace.json along with your input parameters:

# Example: invoking the "show-me" skill

from claude_code import run_skill

result = run_skill(
    plugin_name="show-me",          # ← name from marketplace.json

    input="Explain GraphQL basics", # any free‑form instruction

)

print(result)   # renders the diagram / HTML generated by the skill

For engineering-specific tasks, the same invocation pattern applies:

# Example: invoking the "design-control-loop" skill

result = run_skill(
    plugin_name="design-control-loop",
    input="Design a PID controller for temperature regulation"
)

print(result)   # returns the designed control‑loop components and schedule

The run_skill function requires two parameters: plugin_name (matching the entry in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json) and input (the task description). This uniform API abstracts away the underlying implementation details found in each skill's SKILL.md file.

Summary

• All HumanLayer marketplace skills belong to the productivity category as defined in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json.
• The manifest file contains "category": "productivity" for every plugin entry on lines 22-71.
• Skills are invoked uniformly via claude_code.run_skill() regardless of their specific functionality.
• Individual skill implementations and documentation reside in plugins/<name>/skills/<name>/SKILL.md files.
• No other categories are currently present in the humanlayer/skills repository.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the only category of skills available in the HumanLayer marketplace?

Productivity. According to the source code in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json, every plugin entry contains the field "category": "productivity". The repository currently contains no skills classified under any other category.

How are skill categories determined in the HumanLayer repository?

Categories are assigned centrally in the marketplace manifest file. Each plugin entry in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json includes a category field that classifies the skill. The current implementation standardizes all entries under the productivity classification.

Where is the category information stored for HumanLayer skills?

The categorical metadata resides in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json at the repository root. While individual skill documentation exists in plugins/<plugin-name>/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md files, the category classification is centralized in the marketplace manifest.

Can developers create skills in categories other than productivity?

While the JSON schema in marketplace.json supports the category field for future expansion, the current codebase only implements and recognizes productivity as a valid value. No infrastructure exists for filtering or managing alternative categories in the present version of the repository.

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