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 Cortex Code Desktop, Cortex Code in Snowsight, the Cortex Code CLI, and Snowflake CoWork.
• Governance: Administrators can certify skills, control access by role, and track install and usage counts from the Skills & Plugins area under Horizon Catalog in Snowsight.

Enable the feature¶

This feature requires enablement on your Snowflake account. Contact your Snowflake representative to request access.

Cortex Code CLI setup¶

Once the feature is enabled on your account, each Cortex Code CLI user must add the following configuration to ~/.snowflake/cortex/settings.json:

{
  "env": {
    "CORTEX_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_FEATURES": "{\"enableSkillCatalog\":true}"
  }
}

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, category, 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

You can send this link through any channel (Slack, email, and so on). The recipient pastes the URI into Cortex Code or Snowflake CoWork 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.

How sharing works¶

There are two ways to share a skill or plugin:

Private sharing¶

Share a skill or plugin privately by sending the link directly to a colleague. The skill or plugin is marked as “not discoverable” and doesn’t appear in the catalog for other users to browse. 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 sharing¶

Share a skill or plugin to the PUBLIC role or to a specific role. Access and discoverability are separate 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.

When you share publicly or to a role, the skill or plugin is discoverable in the catalog and browsable by anyone with the appropriate role:

• The skill or plugin appears in the catalog for users with the target role.
• Users can find it through manual search or automatic discovery.

Sharing a skill or plugin¶

The following interfaces support sharing:

Cortex Code CLI¶

Use the share command to publish a skill or plugin:

> share my-skill

Cortex Code 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.

Snowflake CoWork¶

From the Skill view or Catalog view, select the Share button on a skill. You can view and copy the skill URI to share with colleagues. Sharing defaults to PUBLIC.

Cortex Code in Snowsight¶

Share skills or plugins from the Skills & Plugins area in Horizon Catalog. Select a skill or plugin and use the share option to get the share link.

Cortex Code Desktop¶

Share skills from the skill manager. Select the share option to publish and get the share link.

Using a shared skill or plugin¶

To install a shared skill or plugin, paste the link into Cortex Code or Snowflake CoWork:

• Cortex Code CLI: Paste the link directly into the chat. Cortex Code resolves the Cortex Extension object, downloads the files, and makes the skill or plugin available locally.
• Snowflake CoWork: Paste the link in the chat, or use the Add button in the Skill Catalog view.
• Cortex Code in Snowsight: Paste the link in the Cortex Code chat pane.
• Cortex Code Desktop: Paste the link to install the skill or plugin.

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

Discovering skills and plugins¶

Automatic discovery¶

Cortex Code can automatically find relevant skills while you work. The “find skill” capability searches the catalog for skills related to the current task and suggests them in context.

Manual search¶

• Snowflake CoWork: Browse or search the catalog to find available skills. Certified skills display a Certified badge.
• Snowsight: Browse the list of skills and plugins accessible to you from Catalog > Skills & Plugins in Snowsight.
• Cortex Code in Snowsight: The + menu and / command display Local, Built-in, and Skill Catalog skills and plugins.

Versioning¶

Skills and plugins support versioning:

• The skill or plugin owner (a user with the OWNER role on the Cortex Extension object) can upload a new version at any time by re-running the share workflow.

Governance¶

Administrators manage skills and plugins from the Skills & Plugins page in Snowsight under Horizon Catalog.

Available actions and metadata:

CORTEX EXTENSION object examples¶

The following examples show how to interact with CORTEX EXTENSION objects using SQL.

-- 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 skill or plugin
ALTER CORTEX EXTENSION new_db.new_schema.my_ext
  SET 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.
• Certification applies at the object level, not per-version.
• You can’t change the RBAC for a shared skill or plugin from the Snowsight UI.
• Security scanning on skills and plugins isn’t available yet.
• Snowflake CoWork supports sharing skills only, not plugins.
• 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.