Claude Skills: Specialized capabilities you can customize

In a new release from Anthropic, I introduce Claude Skills — a lightweight, flexible way to package instructions, assets, and guardrails so Claude can excel at specialized tasks. In the video I published on the Anthropic channel, we demonstrate how Skills let Claude load a PowerPoint skill together with a custom brand guidelines skill, then switch to a poster design skill to create concept art. These Skills are portable: you can use them across Claude.ai, Claude Code, and via the API. This article reports on that release, explains what Skills are, why they matter, and shows how teams can build and deploy them quickly.

What are Claude Skills? 🧰

Claude Skills are essentially folders that bundle everything Claude needs to perform a specific job well. Think of a Skill as a small, focused package that contains:

• Instructions: Clear, step-by-step directions for the task (tone, format, constraints).
• Resources: Brand assets, templates, fonts, color palettes, or reference documents.
• Examples: Sample outputs and edge cases to teach Claude what “good” looks like.
• Guardrails: Safety and compliance rules to keep output on-brand and on-policy.

Because Skills are folder-based and self-contained, they’re easy to version, share, and reuse. In practice, that means you can build a Skill for a marketing deck, a Skill for a code review checklist, and a Skill for poster art—then combine those Skills to produce consistent, high-quality outputs across different Claude products.

Live demo highlights 🎬

In the demo, I show Claude using multiple Skills in sequence so you can see how they play together. First, Claude loads a PowerPoint Skill that includes slide templates, layout rules, and a slide count constraint. Next, we activate a brand guidelines Skill that enforces logo placement, color palette, and voice. With both Skills loaded, Claude produces a presentation that respects visual and verbal identity.

After finishing the deck, we switch gears: Claude loads a poster design Skill to create concept art. The poster Skill contains moodboards, typography rules, and poster-sized export settings. Because the brand guidelines Skill is still active, the poster not only follows design best practices but also matches the brand identity used in the presentation. The result is a smooth, multi-step workflow where Skills compose rather than collide.

How Skills integrate across Claude products 🔗

One of the big advantages I emphasize is portability. Skills aren’t locked to a single interface:

• Claude.ai: Turn on Skills in the web app to make conversational Claude follow your instructions and use your assets.
• Claude Code: Use Skills while working in a code-centered workspace to enforce code style and include documentation templates.
• API: Call Skills programmatically—package them as inputs or references so your app can request outputs that obey your organization’s rules.

This cross-product compatibility means you can build a Skill once and use it anywhere Claude is available, which reduces duplication and speeds up adoption across teams.

How to build your own Skill 🛠️

Building a Skill is straightforward, but doing it well requires thinking through audiences and edge cases. Below is a practical roadmap I recommend:

1. Define the goal: What do you want Claude to produce? A slide deck, a social post, an onboarding email?
2. Collect assets: Gather logos, fonts, tone-of-voice examples, image libraries, and any reference documents.
3. Write instructions: Add clear guidelines and constraints: target audience, length limits, step-by-step formatting rules.
4. Include examples: Provide sample inputs and outputs that illustrate success and failure modes.
5. Set guardrails: Specify prohibited content, privacy constraints, and approval steps where necessary.
6. Test and iterate: Run Claude through typical and edge-case prompts, then refine the Skill based on results.
7. Version and document: Keep changelogs and usage notes so collaborators know what changed and why.

For a brand guidelines Skill, for example, include a style sheet (color hex codes, font names), logo files in multiple sizes, voice dos and don’ts, and sample copy. For a PowerPoint Skill, include slide templates and a master layout file.

Use cases and real-world examples 💡

Skills are versatile. Here are practical scenarios where I see immediate value:

• Marketing teams: Create brand-compliant decks, social posts, and ad copy with a single Skill that enforces tone and visuals.
• Design agencies: Rapidly generate concept art, moodboards, and mockups that start from a consistent brand baseline.
• Engineering teams: Use code-style Skills to produce pull request descriptions, test plans, or architecture diagrams that match internal standards.
• Product and ops: Generate user-facing docs, onboarding flows, and internal FAQs that follow established policy and wording.
• Education: Build Skills that turn lesson content into slide decks, quizzes, and handouts formatted for different grade levels.

One of the demo’s strengths is showing how a single brand guideline Skill can be reused across multiple asset types, which lowers creative friction and maintains consistency at scale.

Design, collaboration, and governance 🧭

Skills introduce a new layer to your organizational workflow, so it’s important to think about collaboration and governance from the start:

• Access control: Decide who can create, modify, and deploy Skills. Treat them like code or design system components.
• Review workflows: Include approvals for Skills that touch customer-facing content to prevent accidental brand drift.
• Audit logs: Track when a Skill was changed and who approved it, so you can troubleshoot output regressions.
• Security and privacy: Restrict sensitive assets and be explicit about what external data a Skill can use or output.

Viewed through a governance lens, Skills become an organizational lever: they codify decisions about design, content, and compliance so the whole team benefits from centralized expertise.

API and developer notes 🧑‍💻

If you’re a developer, think of Skills as modules you can reference from code. A few practical patterns I recommend:

• Skill-as-input: Send Skill metadata along with a prompt to ensure Claude interprets context correctly.
• Chaining: Orchestrate multiple Skills sequentially—generate copy with one Skill, then pass that output to a layout Skill to render it in a template.
• Caching and artifacts: Store rendered assets (images, slides) and reference them rather than regenerating each time.
• Testing harness: Automate test prompts against Skills to catch regressions after updates.

Because Skills are used across Claude.ai, Claude Code, and the API, consistent manifests and versioning conventions make integration predictable and reliable.

Tips, pitfalls, and best practices ✅

From the demo and our internal experiments, these pragmatic tips help you get better outcomes faster:

• Be explicit: Claude responds well to clear, concrete instructions. Prefer “Use 24pt bold for slide titles” over “Make titles big.”
• Include counterexamples: Show what not to do so Claude avoids common mistakes.
• Start small: Build a minimal Skill and expand it based on real usage and feedback.
• Iterate with human review: Use a human-in-the-loop for early deployments, especially for customer-facing content.
• Monitor drift: Periodically re-run test prompts to ensure Skills still produce expected outputs as Claude and your assets evolve.
• Share widely: Encourage teams to reuse Skills rather than building new ones that duplicate effort.

Conclusion and next steps 🚀

Claude Skills unlock a practical path to consistent, high-quality outputs by packaging instructions, assets, and rules into reusable, portable folders. In the video I produced for Anthropic, we demonstrated a PowerPoint Skill working seamlessly with a brand guidelines Skill and then a poster design Skill—showing how Skills can be combined to cover multi-step creative workflows.

For organizations, Skills promise faster production, fewer style regressions, and clearer ownership over how AI is applied to real tasks. For creators and developers, Skills provide a modular way to bake expertise into the tools your team uses every day.

If you’re interested in building Skills, start with a single, high-value workflow—like a brand-compliant deck or a code-style checklist—and iterate. Treat Skills like part of your product: version them, test them, and govern them. The result is a predictable, repeatable way to scale expertise across people and AI.

To learn more about Claude Skills and how to build them for your organization, check Anthropic’s announcement and documentation to get started. Thanks for reading — and thank you for exploring what Skills can do for your workflows.