Skills are named, reusable agentic workflows that you can trigger by name. They’re like macros for Claude — encapsulating multi-step processes so you can run them repeatedly without re-describing the steps.
What skills are
A skill is a prompt or workflow definition that Claude executes via SkillTool. Skills can:
- Encode your team’s specific conventions
- Automate repetitive multi-step tasks
- Wrap complex instructions into a single invocation
Running a skill
This lists available skills. Run a skill by name:
> Run the code-review skill
> Execute the deploy-to-staging skill
> Use the add-tests skill on src/api/users.ts
> Run the "generate-changelog" skill for the commits since last tag
Managing skills
The /skills command provides a management UI:
Options:
- List all available skills (built-in and custom)
- Add a new skill
- Edit an existing skill
- Delete a skill
Bundled skills
Claude Code ships with built-in skills for common workflows. These are stored in src/skills/bundled/ and cover tasks like code review, documentation generation, and testing patterns.
Creating a custom skill
Skills are stored in ~/.claude/skills/. Create a new .md file describing the workflow:
---
name: add-error-handling
description: Add consistent error handling to a TypeScript function
---
Read the target function. Identify all places where errors could occur (async calls, type assertions, external data). Add try/catch blocks with specific error types. Use the project's existing error handling patterns from src/utils/errors.ts.
~/.claude/skills/add-error-handling.md. It’s immediately available:
> Run the add-error-handling skill on src/api/payments.ts
MCP-based skills
Skills can also be loaded from MCP servers via mcpSkillBuilders.ts. This lets teams share skills through a central MCP server.
Good candidates for skills: anything you ask Claude to do more than twice. Consistent code review checklists, project-specific refactoring patterns, and deployment workflows are all good fits.