How to Build Your Own Claude Skill (With a Template)

There's a moment that happens to everyone who properly starts using AI in their business.

You've got a prompt that works. A really good one. It took you a few goes to get right, and now it does exactly what you want. So you save it somewhere - your notes app, a Google Doc, that one pinned chat - and every time you need it you go and find it, copy it, paste it, and fill in the gaps.

And then one day you can't be bothered to go and find it, so you just wing it. And the output is worse. And you don't quite notice, because it's still fine.

That's the problem a skill solves.

A prompt is something you have to remember to paste. A skill is something Claude reaches for on its own. You describe what you need in your normal words, and it already knows your rules, your format and your preferences - because you told it once, properly, instead of half-telling it forty times.

This post is how to build one.

You'll get more out of this with your AI brain already set up.

A skill holds your rules. Your knowledge base holds your business. They work together - and a skill that has to keep asking who your clients are isn't saving you much. If you haven't built yours: The Co-Founder Setup.

Step 1 - Find the skill worth building

Don't start by deciding what skill you want. Start by finding out what you're already doing over and over.

You are the worst judge of this, by the way. The tasks that eat your week don't feel like tasks - they feel like just how the work goes. So don't guess. Ask.

Look back through my recent chats with you.

I'm looking for the things I ask you to do over & over - the same kind of task,
the same kind of output, where I end up re-explaining my preferences every time.

Give me the top 5 as a table:
What the task is | How often I ask for it | Roughly how long it takes me each
time | What I have to re-explain every single time.

Then tell me which ONE would save me the most time as a skill, & why.

Don't build anything yet.

That last column - what I have to re-explain every time - is the one that matters. That's not a preference. That's a rule you've been carrying around in your head, and it's exactly what belongs in a skill.

When I ran this, mine came back with content scripting. Every single time I asked for a script I was re-explaining my tone, the phrases I hate, the length, the format. So that's the skill I built first, and it now holds all of it permanently.

Step 2 - Build it with the Skill Creator

Claude has a skill for building skills. Use it - it'll walk you through the structure properly rather than you inventing it.

Here's the prompt, with the template below it:

Use the Skill Creator skill to build me a skill for [THE TASK YOU PICKED].

Follow the template below.

Before you write anything, interview me. Ask ONE question at a time until you
know:
- exactly what I want it to produce, & in what format
- what I always want it to do
- what I never want it to do
- what good looks like, & what bad looks like

Do not fill in gaps by guessing. If you don't know my preference, ask me for it.

Then give me the finished SKILL.md.

[PASTE THE TEMPLATE HERE]

"Do not fill in gaps by guessing" is the line that makes this work. Left to its own devices Claude will write you a perfectly reasonable skill full of perfectly reasonable defaults, none of which are yours. The interview is the whole point.

Step 3 - The template

This is the shape. Everything in brackets is yours to fill in.

---
name: kebab-case-name
description: What this skill does AND when it should be used. Written in the
  third person. This is the only part read before deciding whether to load the
  skill, so name the actual trigger - the task, the type of document, the words
  I'd naturally use when I want this.
---

# [Skill name]

## What this is for
[One short paragraph. The job this does, and who it's being done for.]

## Before you start
[What you need from me before you can do this properly. If any of it is
missing, ask ONE question and stop - don't guess, and don't produce something
and then ask afterwards.]

## How to do it
1. [step]
2. [step]
3. [step]

## The rules
- [Non-negotiable]
- [Non-negotiable]
- Never [the thing that ruins it]
- Never [the specific phrase or habit you can't stand]

## Output exactly this
[The exact shape you want back. Headings, order, length. Be strict - vague
instructions here are why outputs come back inconsistent.]

## What good looks like
[A real example of a great output.]

## What bad looks like
[A real example of a bad one, and one line on WHY it's bad.]

Four things about this template are doing the heavy lifting, and they're the four things people get wrong.

The description is the trigger

This is the single most important line in the file, and almost everyone writes it lazily.

Claude reads the name and description of every skill you've got, all the time. It reads the rest of the file only once it's decided the skill is relevant. So the description isn't a summary for your benefit - it's the thing that decides whether your skill ever gets used at all.

Write it so it names the situation, not just the subject.

• ❌ "Helps with content." Never fires. Too vague to match anything.
• ✅ "Use when drafting or reviewing a short-form script, reel or caption - writing a new one from a topic, or tightening a draft that's already written."

That second one names the tasks and the words you'd actually use.

One skill, one job

The temptation is to build one giant skill that does everything. Don't. A skill that covers five jobs will get loaded for the wrong one, and then apply the wrong rules.

If your skill needs the word "and" more than twice to describe it, it's two skills.

The "never" list is the valuable part

Anyone can write down what they want. The rules that actually improve the output are the ones about what you don't want - the phrases you hate, the structures that don't sound like you, the thing it keeps doing that you keep correcting.

Every time you find yourself typing "no, not like that" - that's a line for the never list. Go and add it.

Good and bad examples beat instructions

One real example of a great output teaches more than five paragraphs describing one. Include a bad one too, with a line explaining why it's bad, because that's what stops the same mistake coming back.

Step 4 - Upload it

Once you've got your SKILL.md, get it into Claude:

1. Go to Customise
2. Then Skills
3. Then Add Skill
4. Upload it

That's it. It's now available in every chat, and you never have to paste that prompt again.

Step 5 - Test it, tweak it, then let it rewrite itself

This is the step that actually makes the skill good, and it's the one everybody skips.

The version you just uploaded is a draft. It's built on what you said you wanted, which is never quite the same as what you want when you see it in front of you.

So:

1. Open a brand new chat - and make sure it's connected to your AI brain, or the output will be generic and you'll blame the skill for it.

2. Ask for the real thing. "Create [whatever it is] using my [skill name] skill." Give it a genuine piece of work, not a test case.

3. Read what comes back, and fix it in that chat. Not in the skill file - in the conversation. "Shorter." "Don't open like that." "Put the numbers at the top." Keep going until the output is genuinely where you want it.

4. Then get Claude to rewrite the skill from the conversation. This is the prompt:

Please review this whole chat.

I've been correcting your output until it's where I actually want it. Now update
my [SKILL NAME] skill so it produces THIS by default, without me having to
correct it every time.

Specifically:
- Turn every correction I made into an explicit rule
- Anything I asked for twice goes into the instructions
- Anything I rejected goes on the never list
- Update the output format so it matches exactly what we've landed on

If any of my corrections contradict something already in the skill, tell me
rather than quietly overwriting it.

Then give me the updated SKILL.md.

5. Re-upload it. Same as Step 4 - Customise, Skills, Add Skill. Replace the old version so you're not running two.

Then do it again next time you use it.

This loop is the whole method. Every rule in my scripting skill came out of an actual correction in a real chat - not from me sitting there in advance trying to imagine what I might one day want. You cannot write a good skill from theory. You can only write a good one from corrections.

Step 6 - The other test: does it fire on its own?

There's a second thing worth checking, and it's a different failure entirely.

Open a fresh chat and ask for the thing in your own normal words, without mentioning the skill at all. Exactly how you'd ask on a Tuesday when you're busy and not thinking about it.

• If it fires - your description is doing its job.
• If it doesn't - the problem is your description, not your skill. Go back to the description line (see Step 3) and rewrite it so it names the situation the way you'd actually describe it, not the way you'd file it. Then re-upload.

Nearly every "my skill doesn't work" is really "my skill never loaded."

So when is it finished?

It isn't finished when you upload it. It's finished when you stop correcting the output.

Mine has been round the Step 5 loop several times, and it got better every round - because every round came from something that annoyed me in a real piece of work.

Start with one

Run the first prompt today. See what comes back.

You'll probably be surprised at what's on the list - the tasks that are quietly eating your week are rarely the ones you'd have picked.

Then build that one, upload it, and use it for a fortnight before you build another. One skill you actually use beats six sitting in your settings.

If you haven't got your AI brain set up yet, that's the foundation for all of this: start here.

And if what you want is the whole system - the pricing, the positioning, and the tech and AI that lets you run a business on three days a week - that's what I teach.

Watch the free training →