Your first Claude skill

Your first Claude skill: turn the instructions you keep pasting into one

A skill is a saved set of instructions Claude loads when that job comes up. This guide shows how to make your first one by asking Claude in a chat, how to use it in Claude Code, and a complete example you can copy.

What you need

• A Claude account. Anthropic's help page: "Skills are available for users on Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans."

• Code execution switched on. On Free, Pro and Max, go to Settings > Capabilities and turn on Code execution and file creation. On Team and Enterprise, an Owner controls it in Organization settings > Plugins & skills, under the Policy tab.

• The instructions you keep pasting, and one example of output you were happy with.

• For Claude Code: a session signed in with the same Claude account, or a text editor to write the file yourself.

What a skill is, and when to make one

Anthropic's definition: "Skills are folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude loads dynamically to improve performance on specialized tasks." Every skill has a SKILL.md file. At the top sit its name and a description of what it does. Claude reads those first to decide whether to load the rest, so the full instructions only come in when the job matches.

When to make one, from the Claude Code docs: "Create a skill when you keep pasting the same instructions, checklist, or multi-step procedure into chat."

Step 1: ask Claude to build it

Open a new chat on claude.ai and paste this. Change the words in [brackets].

I want to create a skill for [the job, for example: my weekly update to my manager].

Here are the instructions I paste every time:
[paste them]

Here's an example of output I was happy with:
[paste it, or attach the file]

Ask me what you need to know first, one question at a time. Then build the skill. Write the description so it says what the skill does and when to use it, in the words I'd use when I ask for this job.

Claude asks about your process, then builds it. From the help page: "In Claude's thinking, you will see it read a skill-creator skill to follow best practices in creating a properly structured skill." It writes the SKILL.md and packages everything into a skill file.

Step 2: save it, turn it on, test it

Save the skill file Claude creates. Your skills live in Customize > Skills, where you turn each one on or off. One of Anthropic's help pages calls this Settings > Capabilities > Skills, so look there if your account shows it that way.

To test it, describe a task the skill should handle, without naming the skill. If Claude picks it up, you'll see "Using [skill name]" in its thinking. If the output is off, ask Claude to update the skill, and test again.

Step 3: use it in Claude Code

There are 2 ways to get a skill into Claude Code.

1. Sync it from claude.ai. From the Claude Code changelog: "Added syncing of the skills and plugins enabled on your claude.ai account to terminal sessions signed in with it; opt out with syncClaudeAiSkills: false or syncClaudeAiPlugins: false". Run /skills and your synced skills are listed under claude.ai sync. The sync is one-way, from your account to Claude Code. It doesn't run when Claude Code signs in with an API key, runs on a cloud provider such as Amazon Bedrock, or starts with --safe-mode.

2. Write the file yourself. A personal skill goes in ~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md and loads in all your projects on that computer. A project skill goes in .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md inside the project folder and loads for sessions in that project.

Then use it 2 ways. Type / and the skill's name, for example /weekly-update. Or ask for the job in your own words, and Claude loads the skill when your request matches its description. /skills lists every skill Claude Code has loaded.

If a synced skill shares a name with another command, the other command keeps the short name and the synced skill runs as /anthropic-skills:<name>.

A complete example: weekly-update

Save this as ~/.claude/skills/weekly-update/SKILL.md, or zip the weekly-update folder and upload it on claude.ai: Customize > Skills, the "+" button, "+ Create skill", then "Upload a skill".

---name: weekly-updatedescription: Turns rough notes on the week into a 5-line update for a manager, with wins, blockers, asks and next week's top 3. Use when the user asks for a weekly update, status update, Friday update or end-of-week summary, or pastes notes on what they did this week.---# Weekly updateTurn the notes the user gives you into these 5 lines, in this order:1. Wins: up to 3, each with its result, and a number if the notes have one.2. Blockers: what's stuck and what it's waiting on.3. Asks: what the user needs from their manager, and by when.4. Next week: the top 3 priorities.5. One line the manager could forward as it is.Rules:- Use only facts from the notes. If a win has no number, leave the number out. Never invent one.- Keep it under 120 words.- Plain words. No emoji.- If the notes don't cover a line, write "None this week" for it.After the update, list anything from the notes you left out, so the user can check nothing important was cut.

Why it's built this way:

• The name uses lowercase letters and hyphens only, which Anthropic's authoring rules require, and it becomes the command you type.

• The description says what the skill does and when to use it, in the third person, with the words you'd type when you want it. That's what Claude matches against.

• It uses only the name and description fields, so the same file works in Claude Code and as a claude.ai upload.

The mistake to avoid

A vague description. Claude decides whether to load a skill from its description, so "Helps with documents" (the example Anthropic gives of what not to write) means it never gets picked. Say what it does and when to use it, and use the words you'd type when you want it. If it still doesn't load, the Claude Code docs say to check the description "includes keywords users would naturally say", and you can always call it by name. If it loads when you don't want it, make the description more specific.