Custom Skills

What are skills?

Skills are instruction files that teach Claude how to do specific tasks. Instead of explaining your process every time, you write it once and invoke it with a command.

Think of them like recipes. “When I say /weekly-review, here’s exactly what I want you to do.”

Skills live in:

• ~/.claude/skills/ — Personal skills, available everywhere
• .claude/skills/ — Folder-specific skills

A simple example

Say you have a weekly planning ritual. You could create a skill:

# Weekly Review

Help me review my week and plan the next one.

## Instructions

1. Ask what went well this week
2. Ask what didn't go as planned
3. Ask what's most important for next week
4. Summarize into a simple plan with 3 priorities
5. Save to my Notes folder as "Week of [date].md"

## Notes

- Keep the tone encouraging, not critical
- Focus on what I can control

Now /weekly-review runs this exact process.

Examples of custom skills

These are skills I’ve built for myself. They don’t come with Claude Code — I’m sharing them so you can see what’s possible and create your own.

Productivity & thinking:

Skill	What it does
/deep-research	Research any topic from multiple angles, then synthesize findings
/reflect	End-of-day reflection, saves to my notes
/sparring	Helps me prioritize when I’m overwhelmed

Meta-skills (skills that create other skills):

Skill	What it does
/skill-learner	Research any topic and auto-generate a complete skill from it
/skill-creator	Guided skill creation with best practices
/agent-creator	Design sub-agents and multi-agent systems

/deep-research

When I ask Claude to research something, it launches three parallel agents that look at the topic from different angles, then synthesizes their findings. Here’s the core of how it works:

# Deep Research

Multi-perspective research on any topic.

## Instructions

1. Launch three research agents in parallel:

   - **Technical**: Implementation details, how it works, architecture
   - **Strategic**: Market context, adoption, business implications
   - **Critical**: Limitations, risks, failure modes, counterarguments

2. Wait for all three to complete

3. Synthesize findings into a coherent report:
   - Key findings from each perspective
   - Areas of agreement and disagreement
   - Recommendations based on the full picture

## When to trigger

- User says "research [topic]" or "deep dive on [topic]"
- User asks for "due diligence" or "evaluate [thing]"

/skill-learner

This skill researches any topic and generates a complete skill file from what it learns:

# Skill Learner

Research a topic and create a skill from the findings.

## Instructions

1. Take the topic the user provides
2. Research it thoroughly:

   - Core concepts and terminology
   - Best practices and common patterns
   - Common mistakes and pitfalls
   - Quick reference information

3. Generate a complete skill file with:

   - Clear instructions Claude can follow
   - Examples of good and bad approaches
   - Quick reference section for common tasks

4. Save to ~/.claude/skills/[topic-name]/SKILL.md

## Example usage

User: /skill-learner "Tailwind CSS v4"

Result: A complete skill that knows Tailwind v4 patterns,
the new CSS-first configuration, and common gotchas.

Creating your own

You don’t need my skills to get started. The simplest approach: just describe what you want to Claude and ask it to create a skill file.

"Create a skill that helps me write thank-you notes.
It should ask who the note is for, what I'm thanking them for,
and draft something warm but professional.
Save it to ~/.claude/skills/thank-you-notes/SKILL.md"

Claude will create the skill file. Next session, /thank-you-notes just works.

Skill triggers

Skills can run manually (/skill-name) or automatically based on what you say:

## When to trigger

- User says "let's plan" or "weekly planning"
- User mentions being overwhelmed with tasks
- Monday mornings

For developers

Skills become especially powerful for development workflows:

Skill	What it does
/commit	Create git commits with good messages
/pr	Create pull requests
/review	Review code changes

Example: A commit skill

# Commit Skill

Make commits that follow this project's conventions.

## When to trigger

User says "commit", "/commit", or asks to commit changes.

## Instructions

1. Run `git status` and `git diff` to see changes
2. Write a commit message following conventional commits
3. Stage and commit with the message
4. Show the result

## Examples

Good: "feat(auth): add password reset flow"
Bad: "updated stuff"

## Notes

- Never push automatically
- Ask before amending existing commits

Project-specific skills

Put skills in .claude/skills/ for project-specific behavior:

.claude/
└── skills/
    ├── test.md        # How to run tests here
    ├── deploy.md      # Deployment process
    └── code-style.md  # This project's conventions

These customize Claude for your specific project.

What else can you do with this?

Skills are just one part of what makes Claude Code useful. The real question is: what can you actually use it for?

Coming soon: A collection of use cases — what Claude Code can help with beyond coding, from research to organization to writing to personal workflows.

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Official Documentation

• Agent Skills — Creating custom slash commands and reusable workflows