Skills

Create and use reusable agentic workflows with the skill system.

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

> /skills

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

Or directly invoke a skill in conversation:

> Run the "generate-changelog" skill for the commits since last tag

Managing skills

The /skills command provides a management UI:

> /skills

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.

Save this as ~/.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.