Lesson 459 of 2116
Skills: Bundled Procedural Knowledge
Skills are reusable bundles of instructions plus optional scripts and assets. They're how Claude Code learns a procedure once and reapplies it everywhere.
Lesson map
What this lesson covers
Learning path
The main moves in order
- 1What a skill is
- 2skill
- 3procedural knowledge
- 4skill bundle
Concept cluster
Terms to connect while reading
Section 1
What a skill is
A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md (the instructions), optional scripts (helpers the model can call), and optional assets (templates, examples). When the model recognizes that a user request matches the skill's description, it loads the skill and follows its instructions instead of improvising.
Where skills live
- User-scoped: in `~/.claude/skills/<skill-name>/` — available across all projects
- Project-scoped: in `.claude/skills/<skill-name>/` inside a repo — versioned and shared with the team
- Plugin-scoped: shipped by official or third-party plugins, prefixed with the plugin name
- Discoverable: the SKILL.md frontmatter description is what triggers the skill
Anatomy of a skill
A simple SKILL.md. The description is what makes the model find it. The body is what makes the model follow it.
---
name: release-notes
description: Generate user-facing release notes from recent commits. Triggers when the user asks for release notes, changelog, or what changed since version X.
---
# Release Notes
When invoked:
1. Run `git log --oneline <last-tag>..HEAD`.
2. Group commits by type (feat, fix, perf, docs).
3. Translate each commit subject into user-facing language.
4. Output as Markdown headed by the new version.
5. Suggest a one-line summary at the top.
Output format example: see ./examples/sample-notes.md.When skills are the right packaging
- 1A workflow you want to share with teammates without making them remember a custom command
- 2A procedure that has multiple steps and benefits from explicit instructions
- 3A task that has a 'usually trips up the model' kind of nuance worth encoding
- 4A workflow that uses a specific template, example, or sub-script
- 5Knowledge that should travel with the project and version-control with it
Skills you should expect to use
Compare the options
| Type | Example skills |
|---|---|
| Personal | Daily standup writeup, weekly review |
| Team / project | Release notes, deploy checklist, code review rubric |
| Plugin | Vercel deploy, security review, Anthropic SDK migration |
Key terms in this lesson
The big idea: skills are how teams encode 'the way we do X' into something the model can find and follow. Spend on the description; reuse the result.
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