What are Claude Skills and Why they matter for AI Agents

If you’ve ever wished your AI assistant could follow complex, company-specific processes, or just stop guessing at the wrong approach, Claude Skills are worth your attention.

What Are Claude Skills?

Claude Skills are modular toolkits that help AI agents perform specific tasks more accurately and reliably.

Each skill is a lightweight folder that includes:

• Instructions on how to complete a task
• Context relevant to your company, project, or workflow
• Examples and metadata to guide the agent’s behaviour and enable some level of course correction

Think of them as plug-ins for Claude: you define a task once, and Claude can load that skill on demand, when it’s needed most.

Why Skills Matter

Most AI models, including Claude, are generalists by default. They’re great at broad tasks but they often lack procedural knowledge (clear, step-by-step instructions) or context (team norms, tools, jargon) to do the real work reliably.

Claude Skills solve this by giving agents:

• Access to your way of doing things
• Structured, reusable knowledge
• The ability to follow consistent processes over time

This reduces hallucinations, improves output relevance & quality, and makes agents easier to trust.

How Claude Uses Skills

Once a skill is added, Claude can:

• Automatically detect when a skill is relevant
• Directly use a skill with a command, like /explain-code

Skills are stored as folders, each with a SKILL.md file describing what to do and when to use it.

Basic Setup

1. Create a folder for the skill
2. Write a SKILL.md file with clear instructions
3. Test the skill by running prompts that invoke it naturally or directly

Example: Code Explanation Skill

Here’s a real-world example of a Claude skill designed to explain unfamiliar code:

name:explain-code description:Explainscodewithvisualdiagramsandanalogies.Usewhentheuserasks"how does this work?"orneedshelpunderstandingacodebase.

When Claude uses this skill, it should:

1. Start with an analogy: e.g., “Think of this function like a factory line...”
2. Draw a diagram: Use ASCII art to show flow or structure
3. Walk through the code: Explain what each part does
4. Highlight a gotcha: Mention a common mistake or misconception

Why this works:

Without the skill, Claude might give a flat or incorrect explanation.

With the skill, Claude explains code like a thoughtful teacher, with visuals, relatable metaphors, and warnings.

Next Steps

Want to try it yourself?

• Create a skill for a process your team repeats often
• Use the skill in Claude via /your-skill-name
• Share it with teammates or your organization
• Explore more at agentskills.io or Anthropic’s docs

Why This Matters Now

AI agents are becoming more powerful and therefore it is even more important that we guide them in the correct direction with guardrails.

Claude Skills give you control over how the agent behaves, in a format that’s open, modular, and team-friendly. They’re part of a broader trend: turning large, general-purpose models into useful, specialised assistants.