How to create custom claude Skills

Custom Skills let you enhance Claude with specialized knowledge and workflows specific to your organization or personal work style. This article explains how to create, structure, and test your own Skills.

Skills can be as simple as a few lines of instructions or as complex as multi-file packages with executable code. The best Skills:

• Solve a specific, repeatable task
• Have clear instructions that Claude can follow
• Include examples when helpful
• Define when they should be used
• Are focused on one workflow rather than trying to do everything

Creating a Skill.md File

Every Skill consists of a directory containing at minimum a Skill.md file, which is the core of the Skill. This file must start with a YAML frontmatter to hold name and description fields, which are required metadata. It can also contain additional metadata, instructions for Claude or reference files, executable scripts, or tools.

Required metadata fields

name:
A human-friendly name for your Skill (64 characters maximum)

• Example: Brand Guidelines

description:
A clear description of what the Skill does and when to use it.

• This is critical—Claude uses this to determine when to invoke your Skill (200 characters maximum).
• Example: Apply Acme Corp brand guidelines to presentations and documents, including official colors, fonts, and logo usage.

Optional Metadata Fields

version:
Track versions of your Skill as you iterate.

• Example: 1.0.0

dependencies:
Software packages required by your Skill.

• Example: python>=3.8, pandas>=1.5.0

The metadata in the Skill.md file serves as the first level of a progressive disclosure system, providing just enough information for Claude to know when the Skill should be used without having to load all of the content.

Markdown Body

The Markdown body is the second level of detail after the metadata, so Claude will access this if needed after reading the metadata. Depending on your task, Claude can access the Skill.md file and use the Skill.

Example Skill.md

Visit our repository on GitHub for example Skills you can use as templates: https://github.com/anthropics/skills.