Skills and Reusable Workflows

A Skill is a packaged procedure that Claude can pick up when a task calls for it: how your organisation writes a board pack, how to turn a transcript into minutes in your format, how to build a quarterly slide deck from a data export. Where Project instructions describe a body of work, a Skill describes how to do one kind of task, and it travels with you across Projects and surfaces. The exam tests the concept, the mechanics at a business-user level and the boundaries with neighbouring features.

What a Skill contains

At its simplest a Skill is a folder containing a file called SKILL.md: a short description of when the Skill applies, followed by step-by-step instructions written in plain language. Optionally it also contains supporting material: templates, checklists, example outputs, reference documents, and for technical users, small scripts Claude can run. A business user can write a Skill without any code; it is a well-organised procedure document that Claude knows how to follow.

How Claude uses Skills

Skills work by progressive disclosure. Claude always sees the name and one-line description of every Skill available to it, which is cheap. When a task matches a description, Claude loads the full instructions and any supporting files it needs, which happens only then. This means you can have many Skills enabled without cluttering every conversation, and it means the description line is critical: it is how Claude decides to use the Skill. A vague description ("helps with reports") will be missed or misapplied; a precise one ("Produce the monthly board pack from the finance export using the house template") will be picked up reliably. You can also ask for a Skill by name.

Built-in and custom Skills

Anthropic provides Skills for common deliverables, notably producing well-formatted documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDFs; these are what make generated office files look professional. Custom Skills are created by you or your organisation. In the apps, Skills are managed from the capabilities area of settings, where you enable, upload and remove them. Claude can help you write one: describe the procedure in conversation, ask Claude to draft the SKILL.md and supporting files, test it on real tasks and refine. On business plans, administrators can make Skills available organisation-wide, so a procedure authored once is run identically by everyone. Related bundles that package Skills with connectors and instructions for a particular job are sometimes distributed as plugins, particularly for the desktop app's agentic mode.

Skills versus the alternatives

Feature	Answers the question	Scope
Personal preferences	Who am I and how do I like things?	Everything you do
Project instructions and knowledge	What is this body of work and what are its rules and sources?	One Project
Style	How should this sound?	One conversation at a time
Skill	How do we perform this kind of task, step by step?	Any Project or surface where the task appears

A rule of thumb: if you find yourself pasting the same multi-step procedure into several Projects, it is a Skill. If it is context about one client or topic, it is a Project. If it is only voice, it is a Style.

Writing a good Skill

1. Scope it to one task with a clear trigger and a clear finished product.
2. Write the description precisely, naming the task, the inputs and the output.
3. Give numbered steps, each one actionable, in the order a careful colleague would follow.
4. Include the templates and examples the steps refer to, rather than describing them.
5. State the checks: the rubric, the figures to reconcile, what to flag for a human.
6. Say what to do when inputs are missing or ambiguous.
7. Test on three real cases, fix, then share.

Description: Turn a meeting transcript into minutes in the Operations
Committee format and produce a Word file.

Steps:
1. Read the transcript. Identify attendees, apologies, decisions,
   actions (owner, due date) and open questions.
2. Use template "OpsCom minutes template.docx" from this Skill.
3. Quote exact wording for any decision involving money or dates.
4. Where an owner or date is not stated, write "TBC" and list it in
   a final "Clarifications needed" section; do not guess.
5. Produce the Word file and a five-line summary for the chat.
Checks: every action has an owner or TBC; no attendee invented;
decisions match transcript wording.

Scenario: standardising proposals

A consultancy's proposals vary wildly in structure and quality. A partner writes a "Proposal draft" Skill: description, eight steps from reading the brief to producing the document, the firm's template, two exemplary past proposals, and a rubric. The administrator enables it firm-wide. Associates now ask "draft a proposal for this brief" in any client Project and get the firm's structure every time, with their client-specific context coming from the Project. Review time halves because the structure is predictable.

Exam focus

• A Skill is a packaged, reusable procedure (SKILL.md plus optional templates, examples and scripts) that Claude loads when a task matches its description.
• Progressive disclosure means only the name and description are always in view; the full Skill loads on demand, so the description must be precise.
• Anthropic supplies Skills for office-format deliverables; custom Skills are managed in settings and can be enabled organisation-wide by administrators.
• Skills describe how to perform a task across Projects; Projects hold context for a body of work; Styles govern voice; preferences describe you.
• A good Skill is scoped to one task, has numbered steps, embeds its templates, states its checks and handles missing inputs explicitly.