CLAUDE SKILLS

What Are Claude Skills?

A Claude Skill is a reusable instruction kit for a task you expect to do more than once. It teaches Claude how to handle that kind of work in a more consistent way, so you do not have to rebuild the same prompt every time.

The easiest way to understand a Skill is to picture a saved work process. A meeting recap Skill can remind Claude to separate decisions, owners, deadlines, and open questions. A policy FAQ Skill can remind Claude to turn rough policy notes into staff questions and answers. A classroom handout Skill can keep the same student-friendly structure each time. A client brief Skill can use the same sections for background, goals, risks, and next steps.

When a Skill is available, Claude can use it as a guide for the task. The Skill can help Claude recognize the recurring request, follow saved instructions, use examples or templates, and run quality checks before giving you the result. It is still your job to review the output, especially when the work affects students, staff, clients, customers, patients, money, or policy.

What a Skill Needs To Work Well

A useful Skill gives Claude enough direction to know when the workflow applies, then enough detail to do the work in the right order. Start with one clear recurring task and make the expected result obvious.

• Purpose: the job the Skill helps with, such as weekly updates, client recaps, policy drafts, classroom materials, or staff handoffs.
• Use conditions: the phrases and requests where Claude should use the Skill, written in the same language a person would type in chat.
• Steps: what Claude should do first, next, and last, including what source material to ask for when something is missing.
• Examples: samples that show what good input looks like and what a useful final answer should look like.
• Templates: the repeated structure you want, such as a 3P update, an FAQ, a quote email, a staff procedure, or a renewal brief.
• Quality checks: reminders to check required sections, missing details, unclear owners, unsupported claims, tone, dates, names, and numbers.

This is the plain-language version of how Skills stay focused. Claude should not need every detail for every conversation. A good Skill gives Claude a clear signal that the task matches, then gives it the instructions it needs for that specific workflow.

Where Claude Skills Fits on PromptedWork

On PromptedWork, Claude Skills is the tool for workflows where the structure matters as much as the content. The Claude Skills articles focus on turning messy inputs into repeatable outputs: leadership updates, client recaps, statements of work, internal FAQs, feedback comments, and manager handoff documents.

These workflows are written for practical users who need dependable drafts faster, not for people building technical systems. Each article shows the source material to gather, the result to ask for, and the checks to run before using the output.

Best Starting Workflows

• Weekly 3P leadership update from scattered project notes - a strong first example of using one repeatable structure every week.
• Statement of work from a discovery call - useful if you want to standardize a high-stakes client-facing deliverable.
• Consistent feedback comments from a rubric and student drafts - a clean example of using Skills to enforce review standards, not just formatting.

When To Use a Skill vs. a Normal Prompt

Use a normal prompt for one-time work. Use a Skill when the same task will happen again and the output needs to follow the same rules.

• Good Skill candidate: a recurring document, repeated review process, shared team format, rules Claude should not forget, or output that several people need to produce the same way.
• Poor Skill candidate: one-off brainstorming, a casual rewrite, a rare question, or a task where the format changes every time.
• Project candidate: ongoing work where Claude mainly needs saved background context, source files, and a continuing workspace.

If you keep pasting the same instructions, checklist, or example into Claude, that work is probably worth turning into a Skill. If you are just asking a quick question or exploring ideas, a normal prompt is usually enough.

Good Everyday Skill Use Cases

The best Skill candidates are tasks where the input changes but the process stays mostly the same. These are practical places to start:

• Document creation: turn policy notes into a first draft policy and staff FAQ, or turn a client debrief into a renewal brief.
• Workflow repeatability: turn a meeting transcript into action items, owners, deadlines, and open questions using the same structure every time.
• Review consistency: turn a rubric and draft work into consistent feedback comments, or check a staff document against required sections.
• Staff communication: turn staff procedure notes into a standard operating procedure, handoff note, or manager update.
• Classroom support: turn a whiteboard photo into a student recap, vocabulary support, and homework sheet.
• Client work: turn site visit notes into a quote email, or turn discovery call notes into a statement of work.

Build Your First Skill: Weekly 3P Update

A custom Skill starts as a small folder. For this example, the folder is named weekly-3p-update, and the required file inside it is named Skill.md. The full example path is weekly-3p-update/Skill.md.

The folder name identifies the Skill package. The Skill.md file tells Claude what the Skill does, when to use it, what steps to follow, what format to produce, and what checks to run before answering.

1. Choose one repeated task. Start with something specific, such as "turn scattered project notes into our weekly 3P update."
2. Create the Skill folder. Name it weekly-3p-update. Use lowercase words separated by hyphens so the name is easy to read and reuse.
3. Create the required file. Inside that folder, create a file named Skill.md. The spelling matters.
4. Add the name and description metadata at the top. The name should match the folder. The description should say what the Skill does and when Claude should use it.
5. Add the workflow instructions. Tell Claude what to extract, how to group it, what to ask when information is missing, and what final sections to produce.
6. Add the reusable template. For a 3P update, require Progress, Problems, Plans, Decisions Needed, and Missing Information.
7. Add quality checks. Tell Claude to check owners, dates, unsupported claims, missing source material, unclear decisions, and sensitive details.

You do not have to write the first version alone. You can ask Claude to draft or revise the Skill instructions before you upload them. A useful starter request is: "Help me draft a Claude Skill for turning scattered project notes into a weekly 3P leadership update. Ask me what output sections, tone, source materials, and review checks I want before drafting the Skill."

Example file: weekly-3p-update/Skill.md

---
name: weekly-3p-update
description: Turns scattered project notes, meeting notes, and status updates into a weekly 3P leadership update. Use when the user asks for a weekly update, 3P update, project roundup, leadership update, or status summary from rough notes.
---

# Weekly 3P Update Skill

Use this Skill to turn messy project source material into a concise weekly 3P leadership update.

## Ask for source material
If the user has not provided source material, ask for notes, meeting transcripts, project updates, issue logs, or pasted rough bullets.

## Workflow
1. Read the source material and identify confirmed facts only.
2. Extract progress, problems, plans, decisions needed, owners, dates, and open questions.
3. Group related items by project or workstream when possible.
4. Flag missing owners, unclear deadlines, conflicting notes, and unsupported claims.
5. Draft the update in the required output format.
6. Run the quality checks before giving the final answer.

## Required output format
### Progress
- Confirmed progress from the source material.

### Problems
- Blockers, risks, delays, or unresolved issues.

### Plans
- Next steps, upcoming work, and expected follow-up.

### Decisions Needed
- Decisions, approvals, or clarifications a leader needs to provide.

### Missing Information
- Anything needed to complete or verify the update.

## Quality checks
- Do not invent missing information.
- Keep facts, guesses, and open questions separate.
- Include owners and dates only when they appear in the source material.
- Use a direct, practical tone.
- Keep the update concise enough for a busy leadership reader.
- Flag sensitive staff, client, student, patient, or financial details for human review instead of treating them as final.

Upload and Enable the Skill

After the weekly-3p-update folder contains Skill.md, package the folder as a ZIP file. The ZIP should contain the Skill folder, not just loose files. A good upload package opens like this: weekly-3p-update.zip, then weekly-3p-update, then Skill.md.

1. Open Claude.
2. Go to Customize, then Skills.
3. Choose the option to add or upload a custom Skill.
4. Upload the ZIP file that contains the weekly-3p-update folder.
5. Find the uploaded Skill in your Skills list.
6. Toggle it on so Claude can use it.

If you are using a work account, the Skills area may depend on account settings your organization controls. For a personal Skill, the practical check is simple: it should appear in your Skills list, and it should be toggled on before you test it.

How To Invoke and Test a Skill

Claude can often choose the right Skill from your request. You can also name the Skill directly when you want to be certain. Natural invocation sounds like: "Turn these scattered project notes into our weekly 3P update." Explicit invocation sounds like: "Use my weekly 3P update Skill on these notes."

A Skill is not finished just because it appears in Claude. Test it with real examples before you trust it for important work.

Requests that should use the Skill

• "Create this week's 3P leadership update from these notes."
• "Turn these meeting notes and project updates into our weekly status roundup."
• "Use the weekly 3P update Skill on this transcript."

Requests that should not use the Skill

• "Brainstorm names for a new project."
• "Rewrite this paragraph to sound friendlier."
• "Summarize this article in five bullets."

Messy input test

Try one rough input that looks like real work: partial notes, unclear owners, missing dates, and a few unresolved decisions. Check whether Claude separates confirmed facts from open questions instead of smoothing over the gaps.

1. Recognition: did Claude use the Skill or explain that it is applying the weekly 3P update structure?
2. Source handling: did Claude ask for missing notes when there was not enough source material?
3. Structure: did the answer include Progress, Problems, Plans, Decisions Needed, and Missing Information?
4. Review behavior: did Claude flag unclear owners, missing dates, unsupported claims, and sensitive details?
5. Boundaries: did Claude avoid using the Skill for unrelated requests?

How To Improve a Skill After It Fails

Most Skill problems are not mysterious. The Skill is usually too vague, too broad, too complicated, or missing a concrete example of the output you want.

1. Claude does not use the Skill when it should. Make the description and example requests more specific. Include the words people use in normal conversation.
2. Claude uses the Skill for unrelated tasks. Narrow the description and scope. Make clear what the Skill is not for.
3. The output varies too much. Add clearer steps, stronger examples, required sections, templates, and quality checks.
4. The Skill tries to do too much. Split it into narrower Skills or simplify the workflow so each Skill has one main job.
5. The Skill is hard to revise. Paste the current Skill.md into Claude, describe what went wrong, and ask Claude to revise the description, instructions, template, or quality checks. Review the revision before uploading it.

A practical revision request is: "Here is my current Skill.md. Claude did not use it when I asked for a weekly project update, and the output skipped Decisions Needed. Diagnose the likely cause and draft a cleaner version of the description, instructions, and output template."

Troubleshooting First-Time Skill Setup

• The Skill does not appear after upload: confirm the ZIP contains the weekly-3p-update folder, and that the folder contains Skill.md.
• The upload fails: check the folder name, file name, required name and description metadata, and ZIP structure.
• Claude does not use the Skill: make the description more specific and add phrases users actually type.
• Claude uses the Skill too often: narrow the description and add plain "not for" language.
• The output is inconsistent: strengthen the template, required sections, examples, and quality checks.
• The Skill is too broad: split one large Skill into narrower Skills, such as one Skill for weekly updates and another for client recaps.

How Skills Fit With Other Claude Features

Use Projects when Claude needs ongoing background context, saved reference material, and a continuing workspace. Use Skills when Claude needs to follow a repeatable process or output rule.

Claude's connected-work features can help when a workflow depends on files or services your setup allows Claude to access. Keep the distinction simple: Projects hold context, Skills hold repeatable work instructions, and connected work helps Claude use the material available in your setup.