Teach Claude how you work once. It applies it every time.
What a Claude Skill actually is, how to build one without writing any code, and the first three worth creating. Works on the free plan.
Free. No email required, nothing to download.
Skills sound technical. They are not.
A skill is a reusable set of instructions, examples and files that teaches Claude how you want one specific job done. You teach it once, and it applies it every time that job comes up.
A skill is a folder. Three things can live in it, and only the first is required.
You do not have to say "use my brand voice skill". If it is set up properly, Claude recognises that the skill applies and loads it on its own.
Say you have a skill called Stephen’s writing voice. You open a new chat and say: turn these notes into a LinkedIn post. Claude reads the name and description first, decides whether it is relevant, and only then loads the full instructions. It never sees the rest until it has decided.
Which is why the description does the heavy lifting. It is the only part Claude reads before deciding. Nearly every skill that does not work is a skill with a vague description.
Two minutes, and you only do it once.
Settings, then Capabilities. Skills will not appear without it.
Customize, then Skills.
Anthropic ships skills for Excel, Word, PowerPoint and PDF that are already built and maintained.
This works on the free plan. You do not need Pro to build or upload your own. Skills you switch on here also work in Claude for Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. On a Team or Enterprise plan, an owner has to enable skills at the organisation level first.
You can write a SKILL.md by hand. If this is your first, do not.
The better approach is to teach Claude your process, then let Claude turn that into the right structure. It knows the format. You know the job. Play to both.
Replace [TASK] with the workflow you want to turn into a skill.
I want you to help me create a Claude Skill for [TASK]. Do not build the Skill yet. First, interview me so you fully understand how I want this task performed. Ask me about: 1. When I would use this Skill 2. The input I will normally give you 3. The exact workflow you should follow 4. What the final output should look like 5. My preferred tone, style and formatting 6. Examples of good outputs 7. Examples of bad outputs or things to avoid 8. Rules that should always be followed 9. Situations where the workflow should change 10. Any templates, examples or reference files that would improve the Skill Ask your questions one at a time.
Once you understand the workflow, summarise what you have learned and show me the proposed structure of the Skill before building it. Then create the complete Skill using current Anthropic Skill best practices. Keep it focused on this one repeatable workflow rather than trying to make it handle everything. Pay particular attention to the name and description so Claude can correctly recognise when the Skill should be used. Put reference files in separate files where that is better than putting everything inside SKILL.md. When finished, package the complete Skill folder as a ZIP so it is ready for me to upload.
The interview is the point. Answering ten questions about how you already work produces a far better skill than trying to write the instructions cold.
This is where to spend the most time. A skill gets useful when Claude can see what good actually looks like.
If you are building a writing skill, do not just tell it to write casually and not sound like AI. Give it three things you have actually written, then say:
These are examples of the style I want this Skill to recreate. Work out what is consistent across them and ask me about anything you are unsure about. If my examples are inconsistent about something, tell me instead of inventing a rule.
The same works for reports, presentations, briefs, emails, spreadsheets, proposals, SOPs and social posts. Your examples become the quality bar. Better examples beat more instructions, every time.
That last line matters more than it looks. Your examples will disagree with each other, because nobody is perfectly consistent. Telling Claude to flag it rather than guess turns a vague skill into a short conversation about the calls you have never actually made, which is usually where your real style is hiding.
Every skill has a name and a description. On Claude.ai the description is capped at 200 characters, so every word has to earn its place.
Do not write it like marketing copy. Write it as Claude’s clue for deciding whether to use the skill right now. It needs two things: what it does, and when to use it.
WEAK Helps me write better LinkedIn posts. BETTER Use when drafting or rewriting LinkedIn posts for Stephen. Applies his writing style, formatting, hook preferences and rules to notes, ideas or drafts.
The second one tells Claude when the skill applies. The first tells it nothing it can act on. A good description names three things.
Once Claude has built the skill:
Customize, then Skills.
Click the plus button, then Create skill.
Choose Upload a skill and select the file Claude packaged for you.
It will not fire until you do.
Three rules decide whether the upload works. The ZIP must contain the skill folder itself, not the loose files, and zipping the contents is the single most common mistake. The name must be lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens only, up to 64 characters. The folder name must match the name in the SKILL.md file exactly.
If Claude packaged it for you, it will usually get all three right. Check anyway. It takes ten seconds and saves a confusing error.
Do not test it by saying "use my writing skill". That is the easy test and it proves nothing.
A fresh context, with no mention of the skill anywhere in it.
Something like: turn these notes into a LinkedIn post.
Do not mention the skill. See whether Claude recognises and loads it on its own.
Then ask yourself four things:
Anything you are still fixing manually is the next thing to add to the skill. That is the whole improvement loop.
Three things, in this order.
If all three check out and it still will not fire, ask for it by name once. If it works when named but not on its own, the problem is the description, not the skill.
Do not start by downloading fifty skills from GitHub. Start with workflows that are specific to you. These three suit almost anyone doing knowledge work, marketing or content.
On downloading other people’s skills: skills can contain scripts and can install software packages when they run. Anthropic’s own guidance is to only install from sources you trust, and to read the files before enabling anything from a source you do not. Treat a skill like code, because some of it is.
Teaches Claude how you actually communicate, so you stop saying "make this sound more like me".
It can capture sentence length, vocabulary, humour, formatting, how you open, how you build an argument, how you use examples, the level of formality, phrases you avoid, and the AI writing habits you hate.
Give it at least three pieces of writing that genuinely sound like you. Not your best writing. Your most typical.
Help me create a Claude Skill that writes in my voice. Before building anything, analyse the three writing samples I am about to give you and interview me about my style, my preferences, and the things I never want you to do.
Then paste your examples.
Takes one piece of content and applies your process for turning it into content for each platform. A transcript goes in. Short-form ideas, a LinkedIn post, a few X posts and a newsletter angle come out, in your formats.
Help me build a Claude Skill for my content repurposing workflow. Interview me about exactly how I turn one piece of source content into content for each platform before you create anything.
Turns messy notes, finished tasks and numbers into the same clean update every time. Works for weekly team updates, manager updates, client reports, project updates and founder reports.
Help me create a Claude Skill for my weekly updates. I want to give you rough notes, tasks and metrics and get the update back in my format every time. Interview me about my process and show me the proposed structure before you build it.
Do not make everything a skill. The test is one question: have I explained how I want this same job done more than once?
If yes, it is probably worth it. The skills that work have three things in common.
Pick one job you keep explaining. Teach Claude the task, your process, your rules and what good looks like. Package it once and reuse it. That is the whole value.
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