Claude Skills: Create, Run, and Share Reusable Prompts, Step by Step

guide_claude_code_skills.sections.creation_title

guide_claude_code_skills.sections.creation_subtitle

1. 1

   Open Customize → Skills and click Create skill

   Skills live behind the Customize item in the claude.ai sidebar, under the Skills tab — the recording opens an existing dashboard-updater skill first to show the layout. No paid plan is required to create one. Click the plus button, choose Create skill, and the menu fans out into three paths: Create with Claude, Write instructions, and Upload skill. The first one hands the job to Claude's own skill-creator skill.

   

2. 2

   Answer the skill creator's questions

   Bring a plain description of the job: given a long email or Slack thread among coworkers, summarize the main points, call out action items, and draft a response. The creator comes back with numbered questions — input format (pasted text, forwarded email, Gmail connector), which trigger phrases should invoke it, output shape, whether action items cover only your items, and whether to draft by default or ask first. Adding "what else should I clarify?" to the first message makes it ask instead of assume. The answers become the skill, so respond thoughtfully.

   

3. 3

   Review the draft: frontmatter plus body

   The drafted skill is a single markdown file, and the draft names its path (/home/claude/thread-reply/SKILL.md) while splitting it in two. The frontmatter describes the skill: it triggers on the thread-reply shortcut and on natural requests, and its description deliberately leans pushy because Claude tends to undertrigger skills. The body is the prompt itself: produce Summary → Action items for you → Draft, in that order, with the owner's voice, examples and edge cases spelled out. Simple skills stop here; complex ones can also embed code, like a dashboard-updater skill that ships with Python.

   

4. 4

   Test against a real thread, then Save skill

   The creator proposes test cases before turning the skill on — paste a real thread and it returns a summary, action items and draft replies. Feedback here is where the real work is, so send corrections as plain prompts. When the tests pass, tell Claude to create the skill (it will otherwise keep asking for feedback), and the finished file lands in the preview pane with a Save skill button at the top. After saving, thread-reply appears in the skills list with its description and trigger settings.

   

guide_claude_code_skills.sections.running_title

guide_claude_code_skills.sections.running_subtitle

1. 5

   Invoke it with / plus the name

   A skill fires in two ways: Claude infers from context that it is needed, or you type the name directly. The recording is blunt about which is better — inference keeps improving, but the direct shortcut is more reliable. Type a single forward slash in any chat and an autocomplete window lists every installed skill with its description, so you never have to memorize names. Pick thread-reply, paste the thread, send.

   

2. 6

   The same skills in the desktop's three apps

   Install the Claude desktop app and you get three surfaces in one window: chat, Cowork and Code, switchable from the sidebar. Customize → Skills is there too, and the thread-reply skill created on claude.ai is already in the list — nothing was installed separately. The environments are connected, so a skill saved once follows you across all of them.

   

3. 7

   Confirm the skill arrived on desktop

   Back in Customize → Skills on the desktop app, thread-reply sits under Personal skills with the same description and trigger settings as on the web. From here you can run it in a chat, or let Cowork pick it up when working in a folder — same skill, same behavior, and no sync step to perform.

   

guide_claude_code_skills.sections.claude_code_title

guide_claude_code_skills.sections.claude_code_subtitle

1. 8

   Claude Code plays by different rules

   Open Claude Code inside VS Code — the recording prefers this view because the workspace files stay visible beside the panel, and notes that everything shown works in the terminal too. Type a slash and the skill list does not match what claude.ai showed. Skills are installed differently here, and the fastest way to understand it is to ask Claude Code about global versus project skills.

   

2. 9

   Global or project: two folder scopes

   Claude Code's answer spells out the paths. Project-level skills go in a .claude/skills/ folder inside the project root, and are only loaded when Claude Code runs in that project. Global ones live under ~/.claude/skills and are available across every project on the machine. Plugin skills bundle under the plugin's own directory instead, and each skill is its own folder containing a SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter plus any supporting files.

   

3. 10

   Download the skill and rename it .zip

   To move a web-built skill into Code, go back to the Skills view on the desktop or web app, select the skill, open its three-dots menu and click Download. When the browser asks for a file name, rename the extension to .zip — the download otherwise arrives as a single skill file. Extract it and you get a folder with the skill file inside.

   

4. 11

   Drop the folder into .claude/skills

   With the project folder open in VS Code, copy the extracted thread-reply folder — the folder, not the skill file alone — into a skills folder inside a .claude folder. The explorer now shows .claude/skills/thread-reply/SKILL.md. The current session will not see it; start a new one, type the skill name after a slash, and it is recognized. The same .claude/skills structure also works within Cowork, so a folder shared with someone can carry its own skills.

   

5. 12

   Read the file you just installed

   Open SKILL.md and the anatomy from the creation step is now on disk: a YAML frontmatter whose description tells Claude when the skill applies — summarize a long email or Slack thread, trigger even if the user never says "thread reply" exactly — then a markdown body carrying the sections to produce, the reply structure, and phrases that fit the owner's voice. This file is the whole skill, and you can edit it like any text file.

   

guide_claude_code_skills.sections.sharing_title

guide_claude_code_skills.sections.sharing_subtitle

1. 13

   Teams and Enterprise: publish org-wide

   The zip route works but forks versions: two copies exist, and once one is updated you are running two different skills. On Claude Teams or Enterprise, admins get an organization settings view with a Skills section. Upload the skill at the bottom, under Organization skills, and it becomes available to everyone in the workspace, with its own section in Customize → Skills. Members can use these skills but not edit them — ask the admin to download and send the file when a change is needed.

   

2. 14

   No Teams plan: a synced drive and CLAUDE.md

   An experimental workaround for teams on a shared OneDrive or Google Drive. Sync the drive locally, then right-click the working folder and choose the option that keeps it always on this device. Inside sit a .claude folder holding the skill, a CLAUDE.md file that preloads it, and the files the skill works on. OneDrive refuses folders starting with a dot, so the recording settles for a plain claude folder and leans on CLAUDE.md to point Cowork at the skills — advanced, but it shares skills through a drive the team already uses.

   

3. 15

   Run it from the folder in Cowork

   Select the synced Contracts folder in Cowork and prompt: run the contract-generator on the deal-notes file. Cowork checks the CLAUDE.md instructions, reads SKILL.md from the skills folder, and follows the workflow — read the deal notes, scan executed contracts for similar deals, read the template, build the contract — while the Contracts panel tracks the instructions, SKILL.md and deal-notes.txt as context. The skill was never installed anywhere; the folder was enough.

   

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