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07: Your First FileMaker Skill on GitHub
The Latin root of 'publish' is publicare : to make public, to hand something over to the people. Note the order. You make it fit for the public first. Then you hand it over.
You've built a Skill. It works on your Mac, it earns its place every week, and another FileMaker Developer has asked for a copy. Emailing a zip works once. GitHub is where Skills live, and if you've never touched it, this post walks you from no account to a FileMaker Skill on GitHub that anyone can install. Claude does the Git. You make the decisions.
In this post:
What You Need Before You Start
Claude Desktop with the Code tab. The Code tab from lesson four, where Claude runs commands on your Mac.
A tested Skill. A folder with a SKILL.md at the top, built in lesson one and tested in lesson six, Test a FileMaker Skill: Evals and Baselines. For the longer story, see how I built the claris-filemaker-pro Skill and how I reviewed it against Anthropic's best practices.
No Git knowledge. That's the point of this post.
Why GitHub for a FileMaker Skill
Think of a GitHub repository as the hosted copy of a solution. One master, everyone opens the same file. A release is the clone you'd hand a client: frozen at a version, so everyone knows what they're running.
GitHub gives your Skill an address, a version history and an install command. When you fix something, your users get the fix.
Step 1: Install the cadenceux-github Skill
Install it from the marketplace, the way lesson four showed:
claude plugin marketplace add https://github.com/CadenceUX/cadenceux-skills.git
claude plugin install cadenceux-github@cadenceux
Start a new session so the Skill loads. This time, choose your Skill's folder as the session's folder. Then type /cadenceux-github.
It looks before it talks. It reads your folder, sees a SKILL.md, finds no Git and no GitHub sign-in, and tells you where you stand and what's next. It asks before every step that touches GitHub.
Step 2: Create Your GitHub Account
This part is yours, in your own browser. Claude won't create accounts or type your details, and that's by design.
Sign up at github.com/signup. The free plan is enough.
Choose your username with care. It appears in every install command people type for your Skill: your name or your business name.
Verify your email with the code GitHub sends.
Turn on two-factor authentication under Settings, Password and authentication. GitHub requires it to publish code. Keep the recovery codes in your password manager.
Under Settings, Emails, tick Keep my email addresses private and copy the address ending in users.noreply.github.com.
Tell Claude you're done.
Step 3: Sign In to GitHub From Claude Desktop
Claude checks for Git and the GitHub CLI, the small program that talks to GitHub for you. On a Mac without Git, a window offers the Command Line Developer Tools: click Install. For the GitHub CLI, Claude points you at the installer from cli.github.com.
Sign-in happens in your browser, so you run one command yourself, in the Terminal panel beside the chat:
gh auth login --web --git-protocol https --hostname github.com
It shows a short code and opens GitHub. Paste the code, approve, done. You never type a GitHub password at a terminal. Claude then sets your commit email to the noreply address, so your personal email stays out of public history.
Step 4: Scrub Client Material Before the First Commit
Skills are born on client projects, and the examples carry their fingerprints. Anything you push stays in GitHub's history, even after you delete it later.
So the scrub comes before the first commit. Claude asks for your clients' names, server addresses and account names, then searches every file with them. .fmp12 files, SaXML exports and anything holding a password move out of the folder entirely.
Example: Testing the scanner, I seeded a dummy Skill with a Re-Login step, an fmnet: address and a client email, then 'removed' the password in a second commit. The scan flagged all three, and found the password twice more in the history.
Step 5: Say Where Your FileMaker Skill Runs
Remember the open format from lesson 00? Your Skill could be installed in a harness you've never used. So say where it runs.
In SKILL.md. The Agent Skills format has a field for exactly this: compatibility. One line, up to 500 characters, naming the product it was built for and anything it needs to run. Most Skills don't need it. FileMaker Skills that lean on Claude Code or Claris ADT do.
In your README. Which harness you built it in, which ones you've tested it in, what needs Claude Code or ADT, and how to install it in each.
Your users shouldn't have to find out the hard way.
Step 6: Publish Your FileMaker Skill on GitHub
Claude asks for your name, a licence (CC BY 4.0 suits a Skill that's mostly writing) and the repository name, then adds the files GitHub and Claude need. Then, one step at a time, each with your yes:
It creates the repository private and uploads your Skill.
You open it in your browser and read it as a stranger would.
It checks the history again, then makes the repository public.
It builds the release: a .zip for Claude.ai and a .skill file that installs with a double-click on a Mac.
Your README links to those release files. Not to GitHub's green Code button.
Example: Before writing the Skill, I asked Claude how to share a Skill on GitHub, with no Skill loaded. Sound advice on Git. Then it told users to grab the green Download ZIP button. That's the one route that fails: the Claude app turns that zip away.
Step 7: Install It the Way Your Users Will
Claude finishes by installing your Skill from GitHub in a scratch folder and checking it loads, then removes the test. Your users install it with two commands:
claude plugin marketplace add yourname/your-skill
claude plugin install your-skill@yourname
Later, ask "are my Skills up to date?" and the same Skill reports what's changed and not yet released. Changing the Skill itself is a job for cadenceux-skill-creator. Shipping the change is back here.
GitHub Vocabulary for FileMaker Developers
Repository. Your Skill's home on GitHub: the files and every version of them.
Commit. A saved checkpoint of your changes, with a note saying what changed.
Push. Sending your commits up to GitHub.
Release. A numbered version with downloadable files attached.
Compatibility. The optional SKILL.md field, up to 500 characters, that says which product a Skill was built for and what it needs to run.
Marketplace. A list of Skills that Claude Code can install by name, as in lesson four. Your repository can be one too.
Two-factor authentication. A second check at sign-in, from an app or a passkey, as well as your password.
Takeaway
Publicare. Make it public, but make it fit for the public first. Scrub before the first commit, keep it private until you've read it as a stranger would, and give people a release that installs. You don't need to learn Git to do that. You need to make the decisions Git can't.
Your Skill is already useful to you. Let the rest of the community find out how useful.
Next, managing several Skills at once. Continue with my next post, FileMaker Skills Orchestrator.
More to come . . .
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