claude-code-apple-skills: 164 Structured Skills for iOS and macOS Development in Claude Code

What the collection solves and who it is for

Apple platform development involves a wide range of specialised concerns: App Store Review guidelines, Human Interface Guidelines compliance, StoreKit 2 subscription flows, Swift concurrency, Xcode Cloud setup, and privacy manifest requirements, among others. A general-purpose coding assistant has some knowledge of each of these, but a skill that focuses on exactly one concern at a time gives Claude Code precise context and reduces the chance of generic or outdated advice.

This repository provides those focused skills. The primary audience is indie Apple developers, specifically those who work alone or in small teams and use Claude Code as their main assistant. The README positions it as part of a four-layer stack: this repository provides the knowledge layer (what to build and how to build it right), while companion repositories handle workflow commands (SwiftShip), automated agents (indie-app-autopilot), and live App Store Connect API access (asc-metadata-mcp). You can use any layer independently or combine them.

The skill collection covers the full development lifecycle. The product category includes 14 skills for idea discovery and validation before writing code. The testing category includes 12 skills covering TDD workflows, snapshot tests, and deterministic gates. The App Store category includes 12 skills for ASO, keyword research, and rejection responses.

How the 164 skills are organised across 23 categories

The repository uses a directory structure under skills/ that maps directly to the 23 categories:

git clone https://github.com/rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills.git

The skills/ directory contains subdirectories for ios/, macos/, product/, generators/, growth/, testing/, app-store/, swiftui/, swift/, apple-intelligence/, design/, performance/, security/, core-ml/, legal/, monetization/, watchos/, swiftdata/, mapkit/, foundation/, visionos/, release-review/, and shared/.

The generators/ directory is the largest, containing 63 skills that produce production-ready Swift code for specific features. The README lists these: logging-setup creates Apple Logger infrastructure, paywall-generator produces StoreKit 2 subscription screens, ci-cd-setup configures GitHub Actions or Xcode Cloud, and accessibility-generator adds VoiceOver and Dynamic Type support. Each generator adapts to the project it is invoked on rather than producing a fixed template.

The shared/ category contains two meta-skills: skill-creator for adding new skills to the collection, and skill-auditor for reviewing existing ones. The README notes that the total count of 164 skills is enforced by a CI script at scripts/check-counts.sh, which means additions and removals must pass an automated verification step.

Installing as a Claude Code plugin

The recommended installation method uses the Claude Code plugin marketplace. From within Claude Code, run:

/plugin marketplace add rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills
/plugin install apple-skills@indie-apple-stack

This makes 23 category-level skills available under the /apple-skills: prefix, for example /apple-skills:generators and /apple-skills:testing. Each category skill routes to its sub-skills on demand, so only 23 short descriptions occupy context at once rather than all 164.

Updating to the latest version uses a single command:

/plugin marketplace update indie-apple-stack

Plugin installs always track the main branch. If you need a stable snapshot, the README describes WWDC-era annotated tags as pinning points. The wwdc25-era-final tag marks the content boundary for WWDC 2025:

git clone --branch wwdc25-era-final https://github.com/rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills.git

After cloning a specific tag, copy the skills directory manually to your project's .claude/skills/ directory or to ~/.claude/skills/ for global access.

Manual installation and project-level versus global scope

The manual installation path does not require the Claude Code marketplace. Clone the repository and copy the skills directory:

cp -r claude-code-apple-skills/skills your-project/.claude/skills/

For a globally available set of skills across all projects:

cp -r claude-code-apple-skills/skills ~/.claude/skills/

The distinction between project-level and global installation matters for teams. A project-level installation means only team members working in that repository see the skills, which is appropriate when the skills are tuned to a specific codebase. Global installation makes the skills available for any Claude Code session, which is the typical setup for an indie developer working across several apps.

The README does not document a way to selectively install only a subset of categories. If you copy skills/ you get all 164 skills. There is no package.json or manifest file that would let you declare which categories to include, so the only option for a partial install is to copy specific subdirectories rather than the full skills/ tree.

What the Apple Intelligence and design skills cover

Three skills under apple-intelligence/ cover Foundation Models (Apple's on-device LLM framework for iOS 18+), Visual Intelligence, and App Intents. These are notable because they address APIs that are specific to recent Apple platforms and that change significantly between WWDC releases. A skill focused on Foundation Models can carry current best practices without the developer having to search through WWDC session notes.

The design/ category includes 7 skills: Liquid Glass (Apple's glass morphism design language introduced at WWDC 2025), animation patterns, game feel (haptics, sound, and celebration animations), UI prototyping, UX writing, SF Symbols integration, and typography. The README mentions Liquid Glass by name, which confirms the collection was updated after WWDC 2025.

The monetization/ category covers pricing strategy, free trials, external purchases, and bundle licensing. The legal/ category includes two skills for privacy policies, terms of service, and EULAs, including posting those documents and setting their URLs in App Store Connect. These are areas where errors have serious consequences, and the skills provide structured prompts rather than legal advice.

Limitations and the rest of the indie stack

The skills are prompts and guidance documents, not code generators in the traditional sense. They tell Claude Code how to approach a task; the actual Swift code comes from Claude Code's own generation. This means the quality of the output depends on both the skill's guidance and on Claude Code's underlying model.

The repository covers iOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS but does not include tvOS. The README lists watchOS under a single skill, compared to 10 skills for iOS, so platform coverage is not uniform.

Plugin installs have no version pinning and always track main. For CI environments or shared teams where reproducibility matters, the manual installation from a tagged commit is the safer path. The README acknowledges this and provides the WWDC-era tag convention as the solution.

The companion repositories in the stack are listed in the README but are not bundled here. SwiftShip (53 workflow commands), indie-app-autopilot (7 agents for issue-to-App Store automation), and asc-metadata-mcp (live App Store Connect tooling) each install separately. Using this repository alone gives you the knowledge layer but not the automation. The last push to the repository was on 2026-07-24.

Editorial conclusion

claude-code-apple-skills suits solo Apple developers and small teams who use Claude Code as their primary assistant and want structured guidance that covers the full lifecycle from product idea through App Store submission. It does not help if you work outside Claude Code: there is no equivalent for GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or other assistants. The plugin install path is the fastest way to start, but it requires network access to the Claude Code marketplace and always tracks main with no version pinning. If you need a stable snapshot, use a WWDC-era git tag and copy the skills directory manually. The last push to the repository was on 2026-07-24. The MIT licence places no restrictions on commercial use.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. README
4. rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills on GitHub