Save a job once, reuse it forever

SKILLS.

Where skills come from

Do the job first.
Then save it.

You do not sit down to write a skill. You do a real job with Claude, get it right, then ask Claude to remember exactly how. That is the whole loop, and it is how every skill below was made.

If you already locked that job into a deck_specs.md using the working method on the Make good work page, you are most of the way there: a skill is those same instructions, given a name and a trigger phrase so Claude reaches for it on its own.

  1. 01

    Do the job with Claude

    Brief it the way you would a designer. Let it read the files, plan, and build the thing.

  2. 02

    Review it like another designer's work

    Check what came back. Steer it, correct it, go again until it is right.

  3. 03

    Ask Claude to save the process

    Once it is right, say "save this exact process as a skill". Claude writes it down so you never explain it again.

  4. 04

    Next time, one command

    Run it with a slash command. The job that took an hour and back and forth is now instant.

The shift in your head

The move is from asking to assigning. A prompt gets you one answer, once. A skill hands Claude the whole job and gets it done the same way, every time you run it.

Instructions behind a slash command

What is
a skill?

A skill is a saved prompt in a plain text file you trigger with a slash command like /weekly-summary. Instead of typing the same long prompt every week, you write it once and run it whenever you need it.

  1. 01

    Make one

    Most of the time you make one with the loop above: do the job, then say "save that as a skill." If you already know the routine, you can also describe it cold and Claude writes the file in the right place.

    In Claude Code 
    Create a skill called weekly-summary that searches my Calendar and
Slack for the past week and sends a summary to my Slack in the
private channel #weekly.
  2. 02

    See the file

    Claude saves a SKILL.md: a short header, then the steps in plain language. You can open it any time, but it is usually easier to ask Claude to change it.

    SKILL.md 
    ---
name: weekly-summary
description: Pull last week's calendar and Slack into a summary and post it to #weekly.
---

## Weekly summary

1. Check Google Calendar for the past 7 days.
2. Check Slack for messages I sent or was mentioned in.
3. Write a short summary: meetings, key messages, action items.
4. Post the summary to my Slack channel #weekly.
  3. 03

    Run one

    In the Code tab, type /, start typing or pick it from the list, and hit Enter.

Where skills live

Skills sit in one of two places on your hard drive. The only difference is how widely they apply.

Global

~/.claude/skills/. Available in every project. Use it for the way you always work: your writing voice, your default deck system, personal shortcuts.

Project

.claude/skills/ inside a folder. Available only in that project. Use it for one client or job: their brand rules, that project's data sources, a one-off workflow.

Keep them lean. Do not write down anything Claude can work out for itself from the files, only the decisions it cannot guess. The same rule shapes your CLAUDE.md: see the claude-md skill in the gallery.

You do not have to build them all

Install,
don't reinvent.

You do not have to write every skill yourself. We have started a gallery of skills for you to choose from, and the more we each save and share, the faster the whole team gets. When you make a good one, drop it in #claude-crew so the rest of us can learn from it.

Anthropic publishes a big library of official skills too. You can browse all of them at claude.com/plugins.

Don't build what's already there

See what the
team has saved.

The gallery holds every skill we have built and shared so far. Browse the full set, grab what you need, and add your own as you go.

Next See the full gallery →