Claude Skills: teach the AI to work like you (and stop repeating yourself)

Every repetitive task starts from scratch: *"write me the weekly report with this format, this tone, grouped by project, and don't make up metrics."* You type it on Monday, and the next one, and the one after that. AI saves you time on execution, but charges it back in re-explaining. Skills attack exactly that.

What is a Skill, in plain terms?

A Skill is a folder with instructions (and optionally templates or scripts) that teaches Claude how to do a specific task your way. You write it once and Claude uses it automatically every time it detects that it applies.

The best analogy: it is like the onboarding manual you would hand to someone new on your team. You explain once how things are done, with examples, and from then on they do it on their own. The difference is that Claude never forgets it and never leaves the team.

Three key ideas:

1. It is not just another prompt. A prompt lives in one conversation and dies there. A Skill lives in your account and activates on its own when needed, in any conversation.
2. It activates on its own… or you call it. Claude reads the name and description of every active skill and, if your request matches, it loads it and follows it. But you can also invoke it whenever you want: by naming it in your message or, in Claude Code and the Microsoft 365 add-ins, by typing `/` to pick it from a menu.
3. It loads only what is needed. Claude does not "read" all your skills in full all the time. First it sees only the name and description; only if the task applies does it open the full instructions. This is called *progressive disclosure* and it is what lets you have many skills without overloading anything.

Why this is a multiplier (not just a time saver)

A shortcut saves you minutes; a multiplier changes your capacity. Skills are the latter, for four reasons:

• Reuse: what you encode once works forever, in every conversation.
• Consistency: Monday's report comes out with the same format and quality as the one from three months ago. Your "standard" stops depending on your memory or your energy level that day.
• It scales your expertise: your judgment (how you review a contract, how you structure a proposal, which mistakes you always look for) stops living only in your head. It gets written down and applied automatically.
• They combine with each other: Claude can use several skills together on the same task. A "brand tone" skill + a "proposal format" skill + a "review checklist" skill work together without you coordinating them.

The mental shift is this: you stop *asking* the AI for things and start *training* it with the way you work.

Before you start: what you need

Skills are available on the Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans. You need to have the Code execution and file creation capability turned on.

How to turn it on (individual plans):

1. Go to Settings › Capabilities.
2. Turn on Code execution and file creation.
3. Go to Customize › Skills (*claude.ai/customize/skills*).

> On Team/Enterprise plans, the organization owner has to enable Skills and code execution from the organization settings first.

Tutorial 1: Start with the skills that already exist

Before creating anything, Claude already comes with built-in skills from Anthropic that are used automatically. The most useful ones day to day:

• Advanced Excel creation and editing
• Professional Word documents
• PowerPoint presentations
• PDF creation and processing

You do not have to invoke them. If you ask *"create a presentation on the Q3 results for me"*, Claude uses the PowerPoint skill on its own.

Try it now:

``` Based on this data, create an Excel file for me with a summary tab, a formatted table and a bar chart by month. [paste your data] ```

This gives you a feel for the mechanics before you create your own.

Tutorial 2: Create your first skill without writing code

The easiest way is to ask Claude to create it for you with its built-in assistant, the skill-creator.

Step 1: Ask Claude to design it. Open a conversation and write something like this:

``` Use the skill-creator to create a skill.

Task: write my weekly progress report. I want it to: - Organize it by project, not by day. - Use a direct, professional tone, no filler. - Give each project: Progress / Blockers / Next steps. - Never make up metrics: if a data point is missing, mark it as "[pending]". - Close with 3 priorities for next week.

Ask me whatever questions you need before generating it. ```

Claude will ask you a couple of questions, generate the skill and package it.

Step 2: Turn it on. Go to Customize › Skills, upload it and flip the switch.

Step 3: Use it without thinking about it. In any future conversation:

``` Here are my notes for the week. Write me the weekly report. [paste your notes] ```

Claude recognizes that your skill applies and follows it. Same format, same tone, every week, without you explaining anything again. If you want to force it at a given moment, you can also name it in your message (*"use my weekly report skill with these notes…"*) or type `/` in Claude Code to pick it from the menu.

Tutorial 3: The anatomy of a Skill

If you like understanding what happens under the hood, or you want to edit the skill by hand, this is everything that is inside.

A skill is a folder. Inside lives a file called `SKILL.md` with two parts:

The *frontmatter* (the metadata)

It goes at the top, between two `---` lines, with two required fields:

• `name`: a clear name (max. 64 characters).
• `description`: what it does and when to use it (max. 200 characters). This field is the most important one: it is what Claude reads to decide whether to activate the skill. Be specific.

The body (the instructions)

It is regular Markdown: the step by step, the rules, input and output examples, what to avoid.

Full example (copy it and adapt it)

```markdown --- name: Weekly progress report description: Generates my weekly progress report with my team's format and tone. Use it when I ask for a "weekly report", a "status update" or a summary of the week. ---

Weekly progress report

When to use this skill When the user asks for a weekly report, a "status update" or a summary of the week from notes, tasks or progress.

How to write the report - Organize by project, never by day. - For each project, use exactly these three sections: - **Progress:** what was completed. - **Blockers:** what is stuck and why. - **Next steps:** concrete actions with an owner. - Direct, professional tone. No filler or empty adjectives. - If a data point or a metric is missing, write "[pending]". Never make up numbers.

Required closing Always end with a "Priorities for next week" section with at most 3 points, ordered by importance.

Example output ### Project: Customer onboarding - **Progress:** the new flow launched; 12 customers migrated. - **Blockers:** legal approval of the welcome email is still missing. - **Next steps:** follow up with Legal (María) before Wednesday. ```

Package and upload

1. The folder name must match the skill name.
2. Compress the folder into a `.zip`. Important: the zip must contain the folder as its root, not the loose files.
3. Upload it at Customize › Skills › "+" › Create skill › Upload a skill.

For more advanced skills

• Resources: if you have a lot of information, add extra files (for example a `REFERENCE.md` with details, or a template) and mention them in the `SKILL.md`.
• Scripts: you can include code (Python, JavaScript) for tasks a script does better than text. You do not need to write it yourself: ask Claude to generate it inside the skill.

5 skill ideas for your day to day

The question that unlocks everything: what do I explain to the AI over and over? That is, exactly, your next skill. Here are five starting points:

1. The tone of your emails. Draft replies in your style: warm but brief, no "I hope you are doing well", always with a clear next step.
2. Meeting → actions. Turn the transcript or your notes into a list of decisions and tasks (owner + date), nothing else.
3. Brand / style guide. Colors, fonts, words you do and do not use. Claude applies it to every document or presentation.
4. Review checklist. Your criteria for reviewing a proposal, a contract or a PR: the 8 mistakes you always look for, in order.
5. Executive summary. Take any long text and return it in your fixed format: 3-line TL;DR + key points + risks.

Best practices

• One skill, one task. It is better to have several focused skills than one giant one that tries to do everything. Besides, that way they combine better with each other.
• The description is everything. If Claude does not use your skill when it should, the problem is almost always a vague description. Write clearly *when* it applies.
• Start simple. Begin with instructions in text. Add templates or scripts later if needed.
• Include examples. An input and output example teaches Claude what "done right" looks like better than any description.
• Test it and iterate. After uploading it, throw 3 or 4 different requests at it. If it does not activate, adjust the description and try again.

How and where to find more skills

You do not have to create everything yourself:

• The ones Claude already comes with. In Customize › Skills you will see Anthropic's official skills (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, PDF and more). Just turn them on. It is the best starting point to see what a well-made skill looks like.
• The examples repository on GitHub. Anthropic publishes ready-to-use skills at github.com/anthropics/skills. You can download one, review it and upload it to your account.
• The Claude Code plugin marketplace. If you work in Claude Code, you can register the official repository as a marketplace and browse and install skills with one command, without downloading anything by hand.
• The directory inside the app. On Team or Enterprise plans, there is a directory where your organization publishes skills and you can install them with one click.

Rule before installing any skill you did not write: use them only from trusted sources (your own or Anthropic's official ones). If a skill comes from a third party, open it and read it before turning it on, because it can contain instructions or code that Claude will execute.

Start with just one

Do not try to create ten skills this weekend. The multiplier is not in the quantity, it is in the habit.

Your challenge for this week: identify the task you re-explain to the AI most often and turn it into your first skill with the method from Tutorial 2. Just one. Use it for a few days, tweak its description, make it yours.

When that one works on its own, you will understand the shift: you stopped using AI and started training it. That is where a tool becomes a real multiplier of your work.

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To go deeper (official documentation):

• What are skills?: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12512176-what-are-skills
• How to create custom skills: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12512198-how-to-create-custom-skills
• Use skills in Claude: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12512180-use-skills-in-claude
• Overview (docs): https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/agents-and-tools/agent-skills/overview
• Examples repository: https://github.com/anthropics/skills