Skills

Package a workflow once, reuse it forever.

The third time you type the same long instructions (“when I ask for a summary, keep it under 200 words, plain English, no bullet points”), you're ready for skills. A skill is that explanation, saved: instructions for one kind of work, written once, applied every time that work comes up.

Think of onboarding an assistant. Week one, you explain how you like things done. After that, they just know. A skill is that explanation, made permanent.

The clever part is how skills load, which is the opposite of rules. A rule's full text sits in front of the agent constantly, costing tokens on every request. A skill keeps only its one-line description up front; the agent reads the full instructions only when it decides the current task matches. So skills can be long, detailed, and numerous, costing nothing until the moment they're useful.

That makes the description line the whole ballgame. It's how the agent decides when to reach for the skill, so write it like a job posting, specific about when it applies. A skill is a folder holding a SKILL.md (in Claude Code they live at ~/.claude/skills/), plus any luggage the job needs: examples to imitate, reference files, even scripts.

---
name: meetup-recap
description: Use when asked to write a recap of a meetup or event   (this line is how the agent knows when to reach for it)
---

Write recaps in our house style:   (these are the instructions it follows)
lowercase section headers, short punchy lines,
one pull-quote per speaker, shoutouts at the end…

Skills fire two ways. Automatically, when the agent notices your request matches a description (you never name the skill, it just quietly does things your way), or manually, by typing its name as a slash command like /meetup-recap. (Built-ins like /init and /compact are the same mechanism.)

What people actually make skills for:

• –A voice. “Short sentences, no jargon, no exclamation points.” Every draft comes out sounding like you.
• –A checklist. The six things to verify before calling a feature done.
• –A recipe. “When I ask for an icon: this size, this style, saved to this folder.”

Creating one takes no format knowledge. Notice what you keep repeating, tell the agent, add “save that as a skill.” It writes its own instructions.

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