Skills
Packaged instructions, examples and sometimes small tools for one kind of task, which the AI loads only when that task comes up, so a proven way of working can be reused and shared.
Also called: Agent Skills · Claude Skills · SKILL.md · playbooks · reusable workflows
Connections
Understand first
Ideas this one builds on.
Leads on to
Ideas that build on this one.
Related
Often used together or easily confused.
Parallels
The same idea under another name.
Skills that use it
Resources that teach it
- Claude 101 (garden)
- Introduction to Claude Cowork (garden)
- How to Turn a One-Off AI Chat Session into a Reusable Workflow for Your Team (garden)
- Claude Cowork 101: How to automate your workday without touching code (How I AI, with JJ Englert) (garden)
- How I AI (podcast) (garden)
- How I AI workflow guides (garden)
- OpenClaw: The complete guide to building, training, and living with your personal AI agent (garden)
- Claude Cowork for PMs: My Self-Improving Productivity System (How I AI, with Daniel Blum) (garden)
- Tradclaw: a household starter kit for OpenClaw (garden)
- The Agent That Saved My Brain (garden)
- ChatGPT for Knowledge Work (garden)
- Compound Engineering (garden)
- Compound Writing: The Ultimate Guide (garden)
- We Gave Every Employee an AI Agent. Here's What Happened. (garden)
- An Executive's Guide to Implementing AI (garden)
- This week on How I AI: Claude Cowork tutorial for non-engineers + Build your own Slack inbox (for $0) (garden)
- The non-technical PM's guide to building with Cursor (Lenny's Podcast, with Zevi Arnovitz) (garden)
- Behind the Craft (YouTube channel) (garden)
- Use My /Human-Review Skill to Edit HTML and Markdown Files Visually (garden)
- Build Beautiful Slides with Claude Code in 12 Minutes (12 Formats + 3 Templates) (garden)
Competency
Find skills on the commons map ↗
You may know it from
- operations a standard operating procedure A written method that lets anyone do a recurring job the proven way.
- cooking a recipe card
In products
The same idea, under different names in different tools.
| Provider | What they call it |
|---|---|
| Anthropic | Claude Skills |
| OpenAI | Skills in ChatGPT and Codex |
| Gemini skills | |
| Every | Compound Engineering plugin (about 36 skills for coding agents); Compound Knowledge plugin (skills for office work, built by a non-engineer) |
In plain words
A skill is a small folder that teaches an AI how to do one kind of job your way. It usually holds a short instruction file, plus any examples, templates or helper scripts the job needs. The AI sees a one-line description of each skill and opens the full instructions only when a task matches, so you can have many skills without crowding every conversation.
Skills sit between custom instructions, which apply to everything, and a whole custom assistant, which is built for one purpose. Several skills can be combined in one task. Because they are plain files, they are easy to share, version and improve over time, and an open format means one skill can work in more than one product.
This commons publishes its own coaching methods as skills.
Example
A program officer has a skill called “site-visit-report”. It holds the report template, two good past reports and a checklist of things funders always ask. She types “turn my notes into a site visit report” and the AI follows the playbook without being reminded.
How it connects
- A packaged form of context engineering, finer-grained than custom instructions.
- Parallels custom assistants: both bottle up a way of working.
- Skills that run on their own lead into automation, and checking them leads to evals.
Try it
Pick a task you’ve explained to AI more than twice. Write the steps you follow in five lines, in your own words, before asking AI to help you turn them into a skill.
Read this card as plain Markdown: /concepts/con-skills.md. Know a parallel from your own field, or a product that implements this? Add it.