Creating Skills

Creating Skills

Skills extend Claude's capabilities with domain-specific knowledge and workflows.

Structure

skill-name/
├── SKILL.md              # Required: metadata + instructions
├── reference.md          # Optional: detailed docs (loaded on demand)
└── scripts/              # Optional: utility scripts

SKILL.md Template

---
name: doing-the-thing
description: Does X and Y. Use when the user asks about Z or needs to accomplish W.
---

# Skill Title

One-line summary of what this skill does.

## Quick Start

```bash
# most common usage
```

## When to Use

- Trigger condition 1
- Trigger condition 2

## Workflow

1. First step
2. Second step
3. Verify result

Frontmatter Rules

Naming: Use gerund form (processing-pdfs, analyzing-data) or action form (process-pdfs).

Key Principles

Be concise - Claude already knows general concepts. Only add what's unique to this skill.

# Bad: 150 tokens explaining PDFs
PDF (Portable Document Format) files are a common file format...

# Good: 50 tokens, actionable
Use pdfplumber for text extraction:

Set freedom appropriately:

• High freedom: "Analyze the code and suggest improvements"
• Low freedom: "Run exactly: python scripts/migrate.py --verify"

Write in third person:

• Good: "Extracts text from PDF files"
• Bad: "I can help you extract text" / "You can use this to extract"

Workflow Pattern

For multi-step tasks, provide a checklist:

## Processing Workflow

```
Progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Analyze input
- [ ] Step 2: Transform data
- [ ] Step 3: Validate output
```

**Step 1: Analyze input**
Run: `python scripts/analyze.py input.pdf`

**Step 2: Transform data**
...

Progressive Disclosure

Keep SKILL.md under 500 lines. Split large content:

## Advanced Features

**Form filling**: See [FORMS.md](FORMS.md)
**API reference**: See [REFERENCE.md](REFERENCE.md)

Keep references one level deep from SKILL.md.

Anti-Patterns

• Vague names: helper, utils, tools
• Time-sensitive info: "If before August 2025..."
• Too many options: "You can use pypdf, or pdfplumber, or PyMuPDF..."
• Windows paths: scripts\helper.py → use scripts/helper.py
• Deep nesting: SKILL.md → advanced.md → details.md

Checklist

Before finalizing:

• Description is specific with trigger conditions
• Under 500 lines
• No time-sensitive content
• Consistent terminology
• Clear workflows with steps
• One level deep references

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