Teach Claude New Tricks Fast: A Practical Guide to Anthropic’s Skills

Ever wished your AI assistant could instantly grasp your company’s unique processes? Anthropic’s new Skills feature gets you pretty close. Instead of crafting lengthy prompts or one-off instructions, you can bundle your procedures, templates, and helper scripts into neat packages that Claude loads as needed. Think of each Skill like a portable playbook, transforming a general AI into a knowledgeable teammate.

In this guide, you’ll learn what Skills are, how they function, why they are important for teams, and how to develop your first Skill through a step-by-step example for creating on-brand presentations. We’ll also share best practices for governance and rollout, enabling you to confidently scale Skills throughout your organization.

What Are Claude Skills?

Skills are modular folders that contain everything Claude needs to execute specific tasks, including instructions, reference documents, and optional code or data files. When you install Skills, Claude scans their names and descriptions, dynamically loading only the relevant components as needed. This approach makes the system easy to manage yet powerful in practice. Skills were launched on October 16, 2025, functioning across Claude apps, Claude Code, the API, and the Claude Agent SDK.

A basic Skill consists of a SKILL.md file containing short metadata (like name and description) and the primary guidance. It can also bundle additional files such as checklists, brand assets, or helper scripts. Claude intelligently discovers and loads these elements in stages to keep context focused and efficient.

Why Skills Matter for Real Work

Teams desire an AI assistant that understands their tools, templates, and guidelines without requiring constant oversight. Skills bring us closer to that ideal by providing:

• Repeatable Execution: Define a process once and reuse it across various projects and teammates.
• Context on Demand: Claude pulls in only what it needs instead of overwhelming each prompt with excessive details.
• Composability: Multiple Skills can collaborate on a task (for instance, combining a data analysis Skill with a presentation Skill), making complex workflows manageable.

This aligns with Anthropic’s overarching goal to enhance Claude’s utility within real software environments. Over the past year, new integrations powered by the Model Context Protocol (MCP) have been added, allowing Claude to interact with tools like Notion, Canva, Stripe, Figma, Socket, and Prisma. Skills enrich these integrations by equipping Claude with your organization’s specific procedures and standards.

Early adopters showcase the significance of Skills. Companies like Box, Rakuten, and Canva are using this expanding feature set to introduce organization-specific context into daily tasks and content production. Skills formalize this approach, making it adaptable across Claude’s applications and developer surfaces.

How Skills Work Under the Hood

The concept behind Skills is known as progressive disclosure. Claude starts with minimal awareness of each Skill (just its name and description) and only explores further when the task suggests a Skill is pertinent. Upon necessity, Claude reads the complete SKILL.md, followed by fetching any linked files, such as detailed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), forms, or scripts. This layered approach maximizes efficiency while minimizing context overload.

Skills can be enabled in Settings and utilized across Claude apps, the API, and the Agent SDK. A new endpoint for programmatic Skill management and versioning is also available for developers. It’s important to note that Skills leverage Anthropic’s secure Code Execution Tool (beta) to run code and create files when applicable. Admins can activate Skills for Team and Enterprise accounts.

In essence, Skills offer a clean, scalable means to impart procedural knowledge without overwhelming the model with instructions.

How Skills Integrate with Claude’s Other Capabilities

• MCP Integrations: Claude can securely access or manipulate live data in tools like Notion or Stripe. Skills incorporate your repeatable processes, ensuring Claude understands your organization’s workflow.
• Claude Apps and Artifacts: Claude already excels at generating and editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Skills help maintain consistent outputs that are both on-brand and procedural.
• Claude Code: When coding, Skills can bundle helper scripts, testing templates, or repository conventions, allowing Claude to follow your standards automatically.

Practical Use Cases to Deploy This Week

• Brand-Safe Documents and Decks: Standardize voice, layout, and assets to ensure every deliverable aligns with your team’s design system.
• Spreadsheet Automation: Establish methods for cleaning raw data, applying formulas, and generating consistently formatted dashboards.
• Sales and Customer Success Playbooks: Capture discovery frameworks, objection libraries, and follow-up templates that adjust based on industry and persona.
• Compliance Checklists: Guide Claude through steps that meet your internal controls and create audit-ready logs.
• Research Briefs: Assemble quality standards for citations, structure, and synthesis, ensuring outputs are decision-ready.
• HR and Onboarding: Generate role guides, training schedules, and competency checklists tailored to your organization.
• Engineering Rituals: Document PR templates, linting rules, and release notes to ensure code-related outputs conform to your conventions.

These scenarios showcase the kind of repeatable processes Skills are designed to capture.

Build Your First Skill: On-Brand Presentations in Minutes

Here’s a step-by-step example of creating a Skill that generates branded slides on demand. You can follow a similar structure for spreadsheets, reports, or SOPs.

1. Plan the Outcome
2. Define the desired result: a 10-slide deck featuring your brand’s colors, fonts, logo placements, and common slide types (title, agenda, 2-column, data chart, quote, CTA).

3. Specify the inputs Claude will need: a topic, an audience, and any starter content (e.g., a brief).

4. Create the Skill Folder

5. Make a folder named Brand_Guidelines.

6. Inside, create a SKILL.md file containing:

   • A YAML header with name and description.
   • Clear instructions regarding tone, structure, and essential brand rules.
   • References to any bundled files, like palette.json or logo.png.

7. Add Supporting Files

8. /resources/logo.png
9. /resources/typography.md (font families, weights, fallbacks)
10. /resources/palette.json (hex values and approved combinations)

11. /resources/layouts.md (guidance for each slide layout)

12. Zip and Install

13. Compress the entire Brand_Guidelines folder.

14. In Claude Settings, activate the Code Execution Tool (beta) if necessary, then enable Skills and upload your zipped folder. Team and Enterprise admins may need to manage this process for your organization.

15. Put It to Work

16. Prompt: “Create a 10-slide product overview for retail executives. Use our Brand_Guidelines Skill and include a competitor comparison, a case study slide, and a single-slide ROI summary.”

17. Claude will load the Skill dynamically, generate a deck, and apply your assets and layouts. Anthropic also includes built-in Skills for generating Office files, encompassing PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and fillable PDFs.

18. Iterate and Version

19. Adjust the SKILL.md to refine tone, transitions, or slide density.
20. Utilize version control methods such as git to keep track of changes.
21. Once ready, publish a new version and notify your team.

Tip: If your team uses Canva or Figma, connect those tools to Claude through MCP. You can then direct Claude to implement your Skill’s guidelines and push the results into your design workspace.

Anatomy of a Great SKILL.md

Your SKILL.md should clearly outline what constitutes success. Below is a template you can modify:

“`

name: Brand_Guidelines
description: Rules for creating on-brand presentations, documents, and images.

---

Objectives

• Produce concise, on-brand decks with consistent structures and visuals.

Style and Tone

• Professional, clear language, avoid jargon.
• Use short paragraphs and clear section headers.

Brand Rules

• Colors: strictly use palette.json; adhere to contrast requirements.
• Fonts: refer to typography.md; default to system fonts if missing.
• Logos: utilize resources/logo.png; avoid distortion or recoloring.

Preferred Slide Patterns

• Title, agenda, 2-column comparison, data chart, quote, CTA.

Accessibility

• Maintain a 4.5:1 contrast ratio for body text.
• Provide alt text for all images.

File Outputs

• Export to PPTX and PDF; name files using the format {project}-{date}.

Linked Resources

• resources/palette.json
• resources/typography.md
• resources/layouts.md
  “`

Note: Replace the YAML fence with the appropriate header for your Skill. Keep the file concise, and transfer lengthy details into linked resources so Claude only loads them when necessary.

Security, Safety, and Governance Considerations

Since Skills can execute code and create files, treat them like lightweight applications:

• Source Control: Store Skills in a repository, utilizing pull requests for changes.
• Least Privilege: Ensure that if a Skill accesses external systems, credentials are appropriately scoped and rotated.
• Review Process: Require security and domain owner reviews for new or updated Skills.
• Provenance: Maintain a changelog in SKILL.md that includes versioning and authors.
• Testing: Create representative test tasks to validate outputs before broader deployment.
• Admin Controls: In Team and Enterprise environments, designate admins to enable Skills and enforce necessary guardrails. Remember, Skills employ the Code Execution Tool (beta), so enable only those Skills you trust.

Rollout Roadmap for Teams

1. Identify 3-5 high-impact, repetitive workflows that are well understood.
2. Draft Skills for each workflow and conduct a pilot with a small group.
3. Measure completion times, error rates, and user satisfaction before and after implementation.
4. Fortify security and process controls; document handoffs and outputs.
5. Publish Skills in your internal catalog, providing clear descriptions and example prompts.
6. Train champions within each department to gather feedback and suggest enhancements.

In a matter of weeks, you can build a library of Skills that make Claude feel truly integrated into your organization.

What About Non-Technical Users?

Anthropic features an interactive creator flow that guides users through building Skills without needing to edit files manually. In reality, most teams will use a combination of methods: power users might tweak SKILL.md directly, while others can utilize the guided creation tool to structure a Skill based on a conversation. Either way, the outcome is the same: a portable folder that can be versioned and shared.

The Bigger Picture

Skills are part of a continuous series of enhancements that make Claude more context-aware and tool-savvy. With the ability to operate within popular applications via MCP, alongside the capability to create and edit design artifacts in tools like Canva, Anthropic is evolving Claude from a general chatbot into a work-ready agent that respects your processes, data, and brand.

Conclusion

Claude’s Skills are straightforward on the surface but have transformative potential in practice. By encapsulating your expertise into small, composable bundles, you instruct Claude on how your team operates in reality. The result? Consistent outputs, less prompt hassle, and a quicker path from request to result. Start with one or two Skills, monitor their impact, and then expand your playbook library across the organization. The sooner you encapsulate your processes as Skills, the sooner Claude becomes a teammate who truly understands your environment.

FAQs

What Are Claude Skills in One Sentence?

Skills are folder-based bundles of instructions, assets, and optional code that Claude loads on demand to perform specific tasks.

How Are Skills Different from MCP Integrations?

MCP integrations connect Claude to external apps and data (like Notion or Stripe), while Skills encode your repeatable steps and standards. You can leverage both to establish live, on-brand workflows.

Who Can Use Skills?

Skills are accessible across Claude apps, Claude Code, and the API. Admin controls are available for Team and Enterprise accounts, and developers can manage Skills programmatically through a dedicated endpoint.

Do Skills Require Special Permissions?

Yes. Since Skills can execute code and create files, enabling the Code Execution Tool (beta) is necessary, along with standard software governance practices.

Can Skills Help with Design Tools like Canva or Figma?

Absolutely! With MCP integrations active, Claude can function within tools like Canva and Figma, ensuring the outputs adhere to your brand rules and structures.