Skills
Teach Claude your specific workflows. Skills are packaged instructions, scripts, and reference material that turn a general-purpose Claude into a specialist for a particular kind of work.
In a normal chat, Claude is a generalist. It knows a lot but it does not know your team's naming conventions, your report template, your code review checklist, or your brand voice. A Skill fills that gap. It is a small package of instructions and resources that Claude loads automatically when the right kind of task comes up. Think of it as a role-specific briefing that Claude reads before it starts work.
How skills work: three levels
Skills use a clever architecture to avoid wasting Claude's attention on things it does not need yet. Only the metadata loads at startup. The rest loads on demand.
Progressive disclosure. Claude only reads what it needs for the current task.
This means you can attach a skill with a large reference library and it will not slow Claude down or eat context on tasks that do not need it. The metadata is always present so Claude knows the skill exists. The instructions load only when the right kind of task comes up. The resources load only when a specific file is needed.
Four types of skill
Skill types at a glance
Pre-built skills. Made by Anthropic, available to everyone. The four that matter most:
- PowerPoint: generates real .pptx files with slide structure and content.
- Excel: produces .xlsx files with formulas, formatting, and multiple sheets.
- Word: creates .docx files with proper headings, styles, and structure.
- PDF: renders formatted PDF documents, certificates, print-ready materials.
Custom skills. Built by you or your team for your specific workflows. A skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file with instructions, plus any reference files, templates, or scripts the skill needs.
Examples: a brand voice enforcer, a code review checklist runner, a contract review protocol, a data narrative generator, a meeting notes transformer.
Partner skills. Built by companies that integrate with Claude. Notion, Figma, Atlassian, and others have published skills that let Claude work with their tools using best-practice workflows.
These are professionally maintained and updated as the partner's product evolves.
Organisation-provisioned skills. Team and Enterprise admins can distribute approved skills company-wide. Every member of the organisation gets the skill automatically, ensuring consistent workflows.
Use this for: brand guidelines, internal procedures, compliance workflows, standard operating procedures.
What the difference looks like
Generic Claude vs Claude with the PowerPoint skill
Writes out the text content of what each slide could say, as plain text in the chat. You then have to open PowerPoint, create slides, paste the text in, format it, add a title slide, and hope the structure makes sense. Half the work is still yours.
Loads the PowerPoint skill, reads the meeting notes, plans a slide structure, and generates a real .pptx file. Six slides with a title slide, key metrics, three detail slides, and a "next steps" close. Download it, open it in PowerPoint, and it is ready to polish. The structure, the content, and the formatting are all done.
Building a custom skill
A custom skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file and any supporting resources. Here is the minimum structure.
Skill file template
Where to install it:
- claude.ai: upload as a zip file via Settings, then Features.
- Claude Code: place the folder in your project directory. Claude Code reads it from the filesystem.
- API: upload via the API with the required beta headers.
Where skills work
| Skill type | claude.ai | Claude Code | API |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-built (PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Custom | Yes (upload zip) | Yes (filesystem) | Yes (upload) |
| Partner | Yes | Varies | Yes |
| Organisation-provisioned | No (individual only) | No | Yes (Team/Enterprise) |
Skills uploaded to one surface do not sync to another. If you install a skill on claude.ai, it is not automatically available in Claude Code. You must install separately on each.
Five use cases worth trying
1. Brand voice enforcement
Upload your voice guide, a list of banned phrases, and three examples of content you were happy with. The skill checks every draft against the guide and flags violations with specific rules. Marketing, comms, and anyone drafting external content will use this weekly.
2. Code review automation
Bundle your team's review checklist, naming conventions, security patterns, and test coverage expectations. The skill runs a first-pass review against the checklist before a human reviewer looks at the PR. Catches the mechanical issues so humans can focus on design.
3. Meeting notes to actions
A skill that transforms raw meeting transcripts into structured action items, decisions, and summaries. Define the output format, the escalation rules, and the naming conventions. Every meeting follows the same format without anyone remembering to apply it.
4. Data narrative generation
Give Claude a skill that reads raw metrics from spreadsheets and produces narrative commentary: what the numbers mean, why they changed, what to watch next month. The skill encodes your team's conventions for what counts as "significant" and what the narrative voice should sound like.
5. Contract review protocol
Upload your negotiation playbook (acceptable positions, fallbacks, red lines per clause type). The skill runs contracts against the playbook and produces a first-pass review. Always note: an attorney must review all outputs. The skill is a filter, not a substitute.
Security note
Skills can direct Claude to execute code, access files, and take actions. Only use skills from trusted sources. A malicious skill could direct Claude to leak data, execute harmful code, or misuse tools. On Team and Enterprise plans, use organisation-provisioned skills so admins control what is available.
Skills are what turns Claude from "smart generalist" into "smart specialist who knows how we do things here". Start with the pre-built ones (PowerPoint and Excel are immediately useful), then build a custom skill for the one workflow your team does most often.
Next: Claude for Chrome automates tasks in your browser. Or go back to the Tools hub.