Share skills and plugins¶

Overview¶

Skill and plugin sharing lets you share, discover, and govern skills and plugins across your Snowflake account. Instead of keeping skills local to a single user’s machine, you can publish them so that teammates, roles, or your entire account can find and use them.

Key capabilities:

• Sharing: Publish a skill or plugin and receive a link you can send to colleagues.
• Discovery: Search for shared skills and plugins from CoCo Desktop, CoCo in Snowsight, and the CoCo CLI.
• Governance: Certify skills, control access by role, and track install and usage counts from the Skills & Plugins area under Horizon Catalog in Snowsight.

How it works¶

Skills and plugins are stored as Cortex Extension objects in your Snowflake account. A Cortex Extension contains the skill or plugin files and metadata such as name, description, version, and content type (Skill or Plugin).

When you share a skill or plugin, the system returns a snow:// URI in the format:

snow://skill_catalog/DB.SCHEMA.CORTEX_EXTENSION_NAME

To reference a specific version, append a version segment to the URI:

snow://skill_catalog/DB.SCHEMA.CORTEX_EXTENSION_NAME/versions/version$1

You can send this link through any channel (Slack, email, and so on). The recipient pastes the URI into CoCo to install and use the skill or plugin.

Plugins appear alongside skills in the Skills & Plugins area under Horizon Catalog in Snowsight. Skills and plugins follow the same sharing, discovery, and governance model.

Share a skill or plugin¶

Sharing options¶

Sharing is governed by two independent concepts:

• Access (RBAC): Determines which roles can install and use the skill or plugin.
• Discoverability: Determines whether the skill or plugin appears in the catalog for browsing. A discoverable skill or plugin is searchable and visible in the UI for users who have the appropriate role.

Because access and discoverability are independent, you can combine them to share in two main ways:

• Private (not discoverable): Send the link directly to a colleague. The skill or plugin doesn’t appear in the catalog for others to browse, and only people who have the link can access it. This is similar to an “unlisted” video: accessible to anyone with the link, but not browsable.
• Public or role-based (discoverable): Share to the PUBLIC role or to a specific role. The skill or plugin is discoverable in the catalog and browsable by anyone with the appropriate role, who can find it through manual search or automatic discovery.

Sharing interfaces¶

The following interfaces support sharing:

CoCo CLI¶

Use the /share-skill-and-plugin skill to publish a skill or plugin:

> /share-skill-and-plugin my-skill

CoCo prompts you to choose the target role (default PUBLIC) and whether to make the skill discoverable (default Yes). After sharing, you receive a link:

Skill "my-skill" shared to Snowflake connection 'my-connection'.
Share link: snow://skill_catalog/USERS.MY_SCHEMA.MY_SKILL

You can also share from the Skill manager by running /skill and selecting the share option for a specific skill.

To update a previously shared skill, re-run the same share workflow. The Cortex Extension object is updated with the new skill files.

CoCo in Snowsight¶

Type Share skill <skill> in CoCo to initiate sharing of the skill.

CoCo Desktop¶

Share skills or plugins from the skill manager. Select the share option to publish and get the share link. For more information, see Publish a skill to the Skills Catalog and Publish a plugin to the catalog.

Use a shared skill or plugin¶

Install a shared skill or plugin¶

To install a shared skill or plugin, paste the link into CoCo:

• CoCo CLI: Paste the link directly into the chat. CoCo resolves the Cortex Extension object, downloads the files, and makes the skill or plugin available locally.
• CoCo in Snowsight: Paste the link in the CoCo chat pane.
• CoCo Desktop: Paste the link to install the skill or plugin. You can also add plugins from the Plugins Catalog.

If a skill or plugin with the same name is already installed, you receive a message indicating it already exists.

Update an installed skill or plugin¶

In the CoCo CLI, update installed skills and plugins to their latest shared versions:

• To update a skill, run cortex skill update <skill-uri>, where <skill-uri> is the skill’s snow:// share link.
• To update a particular plugin, run cortex plugin update <plugin-name>.
• To update all installed plugins, run cortex plugin update.

Discover skills and plugins¶

Automatic discovery¶

CoCo can automatically find relevant skills and plugins while you work, searching the catalog for items related to the current task and suggesting them in context. In the CoCo CLI and CoCo Desktop, use the /find-skill-and-plugin skill. In CoCo in Snowsight, use /find-skill, which finds skills only (plugins aren’t supported there).

Manual search¶

• Snowsight: Browse the list of skills and plugins accessible to you from Catalog > Skills & Plugins in Snowsight. Certified skills display a Certified badge.
• CoCo in Snowsight: The + menu and / command display Local, Built-in, and Skill Catalog skills and plugins.
• CoCo Desktop: The + menu and / command display Local, Built-in, and Skill Catalog skills and plugins.

Versioning¶

Skills and plugins support versioning:

• The first version of a shared skill or plugin is version 1.
• The owner (a role that holds OWNERSHIP on the Cortex Extension object) can upload a new version at any time by re-running the share workflow. Each upload creates a new version.
• When browsing the catalog, users see the latest version, or the latest certified version if one exists. Administrators and owners can see all versions.

How a snow:// URI resolves to a version depends on whether the URI includes a version:

• If the URI doesn’t include a version, it resolves to the latest certified version if one exists, and the latest available version otherwise.
• If the URI includes a version, that specific version is retrieved.

Governance¶

Skills and plugins shared in your account are governed by users with the ACCOUNTADMIN role. An administrator can browse all shared skills and plugins, certify them, change their access and visibility, reassign ownership, view usage telemetry, and delete them.

Administrators perform these actions from the Skills & Plugins page in Snowsight under Horizon Catalog.

How governance works¶

Shared skills and plugins are stored as Cortex Extension objects, which are created in the owner’s personal database by default. When an administrator performs a governance action, such as certifying a skill or changing its access, Snowflake copies the object to a dedicated database. The first time you perform a governance action, you’re prompted to choose the database where governed skills and plugins are stored.

This model copies the object out of the owner’s personal database so that it can be centrally governed, while leaving the owner’s original skill or plugin in place.

Certify a skill or plugin¶

Certify a skill or plugin to mark it as an officially verified version for your account. Certified skills and plugins display a Certified badge.

Certification is tied to a version, so you can certify versions of the same skill or plugin independently. When an end user browses the catalog, they see the latest certified version if one exists, and the latest version otherwise. An administrator can see all versions.

Change access and visibility¶

Access and discoverability are governed independently:

• Access (RBAC): Change which roles can install and use a shared skill or plugin.
• Visibility: Change whether a skill or plugin is discoverable in the catalog.

Reassign ownership or delete¶

• Change owner: Reassign ownership of a shared skill or plugin.
• Delete: Remove a skill or plugin from the catalog.

Telemetry¶

For each shared skill or plugin, the Skills & Plugins page shows the install count and usage count over the last 28 days, aggregated across all clients.

CORTEX EXTENSION SQL examples¶

You can manage Cortex Extension objects directly with SQL, as an alternative to the CoCo and Snowsight workflows. The following examples show common operations:

-- Create a Cortex Extension from an existing one
-- Note: CLONE isn't supported yet; use this pattern instead
CREATE CORTEX EXTENSION new_db.new_schema.new_ext
  FROM 'snow://skill_catalog/old_db.old_schema.old_ext';

-- Set RBAC
GRANT READ ON CORTEX EXTENSION new_db.new_schema.new_ext TO ROLE PUBLIC;

-- Certify a specific version of a skill or plugin (requires the ACCOUNTADMIN role)
ALTER CORTEX EXTENSION new_db.new_schema.my_ext VERSION VERSION$1
  SET TAG snowflake.core.certification_status = 'CERTIFIED';

-- Drop an old extension
DROP CORTEX EXTENSION old_db.old_schema.old_ext;

Limitations¶

• Sharing only works within the same Snowflake account. Cross-account sharing isn’t supported.
• Security scanning on skills and plugins isn’t available yet.
• Skills and plugins created locally (in your workspace or on your machine) don’t appear in the catalog until explicitly shared.
• Exporting skills or plugins to storage outside Snowflake isn’t supported.