Claude Skills - An Overview · AI Writing Easy AF for Authors

Claude Skills - An Overview

Skills are basically instruction sets that teach Claude best practices for specific tasks.

If you think of it like cooking - sometimes we have that recipe that we know how to throw together. You eyeball the spices and measure with your heart. That's prompting in ai. You put in what you know and each time it comes out a little bit different, but generally the same overall vibe.

When you get it just the way you like it, the spices are right the temperature and times are just right, you might write down the recipe. That's what Claude skills is. You can save a prompt set, or a workflow, as a skill and then call on it again the next time you need it to have it do the same thing.

For this to work you must be on a paid claude plan (not free version, not using API). This also works in Antigravity (You can make them with antigravity in antigravity).

I have skills for:

Developmental Edits

Line Edits

Copy Edits

Book Cover Prompts for Ideogram

Name Changes

Book Blurb Creator

Category and Keywords (I have one for english, french, italian, german, and spanish)

Etc.

Making A Skill:

When signed into claude: Go to Settings -> Capabilities, and you'll find the skills area (at the bottom). There you can click the "+Add" button and you'll see a menu with three options:

1) Create with claude (vibe-coding): this is where a claude chat window will open and the skill prompt is written for you and you just type in what you want it to do. You can refine it as you go so don't worry about getting it just right.

2) Write Skill Instructions: if you have something already written up select this and fill in the fields.

3) Upload a skill: if you have a markdown file that you already have you can upload it here.

Optional: I name my skills so I can easily call on them. For example I could name my developmental editor skill "DevEdit" (and put that in the skill description "I will request this skill by asking for the "DevEdit" skill")

Using the Skill:

Let's say I have a full manuscript in md or I have a few chapters drafted. I can type into claude's chat window "Use the DevEdit skill on these chapters" and paste the chapters if claude doesn't already have them and hit enter.

Level Up:

After a strong working session ask claude "are there any repetitive tasks we did today that could be made into a skill?" If the answer is yes and you agree with the output tell Claude to write the skill. It will give it to you and tell you how to upload it. (Note - the filename has to be all lowercase. sometimes claude gives it to me with upper case letters and I just tell him to fix it).

If you ever forget what skills you have, you can just ask claude - "Can you tell me all the skills I have saved and give me a brief descripton?" If you fear the ai uprising, throw a 'please' in there.

Are you using skills? Do you want to? If you've made some what do yours do?

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