On Claude Skills

On Claude Skills

The PDF from Claude

  1. Customize Claude for your specific needs.
  2. Instead of re-explaining your preferences, processes, and domain expertise in every conversation,
  3. Teach Claude once and benefit every time.
  1. Repeatable workflows
  2. Generating frontend designs from specs,
  3. Conducting research with consistent methodology
  4. Creating documents that follow your team's style guide,
  5. Orchestrating multi-step processes.
  6. ......
  7. They work well with Claude's built-in capabilities like ...
  8. ..code execution
  9. ..document creation.
  10. ......
  11. Reliable, optimized workflows.
  1. Building standalone skills
  2. Focus on Fundamentals, Planning and Design,
  3. "Skills + MCP"

Skill creator

  1. Claude.ai,
  2. Claude Code,
  3. API
  1. docx
  2. xlsx
  3. ppt
  4. .............
  5. Embedded style guides and brand standards
  6. Template structures for consistent output
  7. Quality checklists before finalizing
  8. No external tools required - uses Claude's built-in capabilities

Claude Example Skills Github repo

Various Skills

Docx skill

  1. DOCX creation, editing, and analysis.
  2. Use this skill whenever the user wants to create, read, edit, or manipulate Word documents (.docx files).
  3. Triggers include: any mention of 'Word doc', 'word document', '.docx', or requests to produce professional documents with formatting like tables of contents, headings, page numbers, or letterheads.
  4. Also use when extracting or reorganizing content from .docx files, inserting or replacing images in documents, performing find-and-replace in Word files, working with tracked changes or comments, or converting content into a polished Word document.
  5. If the user asks for a 'report', 'memo', 'letter', 'template', or similar deliverable as a Word or .docx file, use this skill.
  6. Do NOT use for PDFs, spreadsheets, Google Docs, or general coding tasks unrelated to document generation.

PPTX Skill definition

Deeper workflow example: Skill creator

  1. Step-by-step workflow with validation gates
  2. Templates for common structures
  3. Built-in review and improvement suggestions
  4. Iterative refinement loops

MCP example

  1. Coordinates multiple MCP calls in sequence
  2. Embeds domain expertise
  3. Provides context users would otherwise need to specify
  4. Error handling for common MCP issues

-
name: your-skill-name
description: What it does. Use when user asks to [specific
phrases].
---
  1. use kebab-case or name
  2. what it does
  3. when to use it
  1. 1024 characters
  2. no xml tags
  3. Include specific tasks users might say
  4. Mention file types if relevant

# Good - specific and actionable

description: Analyzes Figma design files and generates developer handoff documentation. Use when user uploads .fig files, asks for "design specs", component documentation", or "design-to-code handoff".

# Good - includes trigger phrases

description: Manages Linear project workflows including sprint planning, task creation, and status tracking. Use when user mentions "sprint", "Linear tasks", project planning", or asks to "create tickets".

# Good - clear value proposition

description: End-to-end customer onboarding workflow for PayFlow. Handles account creation, payment setup, and subscription management. Use when user says onboard new customer", "set up subscription", or "create PayFlow account".

Real low down on Skills, their engineering blog