Build with Claude Code: Skills

Turn repeatable work into a one-word command, for yourself and for Claude.

A Skill in Claude Code is a small folder with a SKILL.md file and optional helper scripts. It tells Claude: when the user asks for X, do Y, using these tools, following these rules. Skills are how you capture "the way I want this kind of work done" once, and never re-explain it. Aimed at anyone who’s caught themselves pasting the same multi-step instruction into Claude Code more than a handful of times. You don’t need to be a developer. If you can write a recipe or a how-to, you can write a skill. By the end of the 90 minutes you will: • Know where skills live (project-local, user-wide, built-in) and how Claude Code discovers them. • Have installed at least one community skill and used it for something real. • Have written your own skill from scratch — for something you actually do regularly. • Know the difference between a skill, a hook, and a CLAUDE.md instruction — and when each one is the right tool. How the session runs: first 20 minutes on what a skill actually is and how Claude decides when to invoke one. Then we install a community skill and use it on a real task. Mid-session we write a simple skill together from scratch. Back half: you pick something you do often — a git workflow, a review checklist, a way you like commit messages written — and we build a skill for it, together. Bring your laptop and think about one thing you wish Claude Code just knew how to do your way. We’ll turn it into a skill.