Feature request: support external repo references in marketplace.json
## Summary
Currently, \`anthropics/skills\` is a copy-in monorepo — every community skill is committed as a full copy with no link back to the contributor's source repo. This creates a maintenance problem: once a PR is merged, the copy in this repo diverges from the contributor's source as they continue iterating.
## The problem
- Community skills are snapshots frozen at PR submission time
- Contributors who actively maintain their skills (adding features, fixing issues, improving documentation) have no mechanism to propagate updates
- Submitting update PRs manually doesn't scale — a contributor with 5+ skills who ships improvements weekly would need to file constant sync PRs
- Users who discover a skill here have no reliable way to get the latest version
## Proposed solution
Add support for external repo references in \`marketplace.json\`, so a skill entry can point to an external repo rather than (or in addition to) a local copy:
\`\`\`json
{
"name": "synthesis-codebase-review",
"source": "external",
"repo": "https://github.com/rajivpant/synthesis-skills",
"path": "synthesis-codebase-review/SKILL.md",
"version": "1.0.0"
}
\`\`\`
With this, the Anthropic directory becomes a discovery channel. \`npx skills add\` resolves to the contributor's repo, which always has the latest version.
## Why this matters
Anthropic already has an internal precedent: the \`claude-api\` skill uses \`auto-sync/\` branches (see PRs #729-730) to automate updates. External repo references would extend a similar capability to community contributors.
## Alternative: contributor-maintained sync branches
If external references are architecturally complex, a lighter alternative would be a documented pattern for contributors to submit PRs from a dedicated sync branch in their repo, with a webhook or CI action that opens update PRs when the source changes.
## Context
I submitted PR #690 with 5 skills from [github.com/rajivpant/synthesis-skills](https://github.com/rajivpant/synthesis-skills). Within days of submission, all 5 skills received substantive updates — new frontmatter metadata, content revisions, version bumps — that the PR snapshot cannot reflect. This feature request is grounded in that direct experience.
The full collection (20 skills, CC0-1.0) is actively maintained and would benefit from a sync mechanism rather than periodic manual PRs.
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