Skills you write yourself

1In one sentence

A skill is a folder with a file called SKILL.md that explains one job step by step, and Claude loads it whenever that job comes up, in chat, Cowork, Claude Code and the API alike.

2New words

3Why you would want it

Chapter 1.11 showed built-in skills. Your own skills capture how you do your work: your proposal format, your weekly report, your checklist for publishing a post. Written once, it works everywhere Claude works, and your team can install it. Anthropic published the format as an open standard, so skills are not locked to one tool.

4Try it now

1. In chat, type /skill-creator (or in Claude Code ask for a new skill) and describe one job you do the same way every time, with a real example of the finished output.
2. Read the SKILL.md it makes. Check the one-line description says clearly when to use it.
3. Call it: /[name] followed by your request. Then try a request that should trigger it without the slash.

5What you will see

[Picture pending: a SKILL.md file and the skill being called.] A folder like this:

my-weekly-report/
  SKILL.md        <- name, when to use it, the steps, the format, an example
  template.md     <- optional: the exact layout to fill

and the top of SKILL.md:

---
name: my-weekly-report
description: Writes my Friday client update from the week's notes. Use when I ask for the weekly report or paste weekly notes.
---
Steps: 1 read the notes, 2 group by client, 3 fill template.md, 4 keep under 300 words, 5 flag anything late in bold.

When it is in place, asking for "the weekly report" produces the report in your format without further instructions.

6Watch out

• One job per skill, and a description that says when to use it. Vague descriptions mean the skill never triggers, or triggers for everything.
• Include a real example of good output; Claude copies it more faithfully than any description.

7Go further