What are Claude Skills
Discover Claude Skills - the powerful toolkit that transforms your AI assistant into a specialized expert. Learn how to create custom Skills, understand the difference between Skills vs Projects, and unlock advanced AI capabilities for your workflow.
🤖 What are Claude Skills
Last updated: January 2025 | Reading time: 8 minutes
So, What's the Deal with Skills?
Think of Skills as Claude's personal toolkit—packed with instruction manuals, handy scripts, and useful resources. When you need something specific done, Claude automatically grabs the right "tool" and gets to work like a pro.
Whether you're creating documents following your company's brand guidelines, crunching data with specific workflows, or automating your personal tasks, Skills help Claude work like a well-trained assistant who actually remembers how you like things done.
Quick heads up: This feature is currently in preview for Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise users. Just make sure you've got code execution enabled first! Claude Code and API users can also jump in on the beta.
How Skills Work: The Smart "Load-As-You-Go" Approach
Here's where Skills get clever—instead of dumping everything into Claude's brain at once (recipe for overload!), they use something called "progressive disclosure":
- You request a task
- Claude scans available Skills
- Picks the relevant ones to load
- Gets down to business following those instructions
This keeps things speedy and prevents Claude from getting overwhelmed. Win-win!
Two Flavors of Skills
The Official Stuff: Anthropic Skills
These are Skills built and maintained by the Anthropic team, like enhanced document creation for Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and PDFs. Available to everyone, and Claude automatically knows when to use them. Easy peasy!
DIY Magic: Custom Skills
Now this is where it gets fun! You can create custom Skills tailored to your exact needs. What kind of magic can you work? Here's just a taste:
- Auto-apply your company's brand style to documents and presentations
- Generate emails and communications using your company templates
- Structure meeting notes in your team's preferred format
- Create tasks in tools like JIRA, Asana, or Linear following your team's conventions
- Run company-specific data analysis workflows
- Automate personal tasks and teach Claude your unique work style
Why Bother with Skills? Three Rock-Solid Reasons
Give Claude superpowers for specific tasks: Whether it's creating documents, analyzing data, or handling domain-specific work, Skills act like professional plugins that level up Claude's capabilities.
Capture your company's brain: Package your team's workflows, best practices, and hard-earned wisdom into Skills so everyone works consistently. No more "but that's not how we do it here" moments!
Ridiculously easy to customize: Anyone can create Skills by writing instructions in Markdown—zero coding required for basic Skills. Want to go advanced? You can attach executable scripts for extra functionality.
How Skills Stack Up Against Other Claude Features
Skills vs. Projects
Projects are like reference books that stay open all the time—their knowledge is always loaded. Skills are more like tools in a toolbox—they only come out when you need them, and they work everywhere across Claude.
Skills vs. MCP (Model Context Protocol)
MCP connects Claude to external services and data sources. Skills teach Claude how to actually do the work. They're best buds: MCP provides the tools, Skills provide the know-how. Like getting a hammer AND the instruction manual.
Skills vs. Custom Instructions
Custom instructions are your "global settings"—they apply to everything. Skills are "specialized talents"—they only activate when relevant. So for specialized workflows, Skills are your go-to.
Want to Dive Deeper?
Craving more technical details? Check out the Agent Skills section in Claude Docs!
Related Reading:
- Pre-built Web Connectors Using Remote MCP
- Anthropic MCP Directory Policy
- Using Skills in Claude
- How to Create Custom Skills
- How to Create a Skill with Claude Through Conversation
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