What Are Skills?

What Are Skills?

Note

Skills are folders of instructions that Claude Code can discover and use to handle tasks more accurately. Each skill lives in a SKILL.md file with a name and description in its frontmatter
Claude uses the description to match skills to requests. When you ask Claude to do something, it compares your request against available skill descriptions and activates the ones that match
Personal skills go in ~/.claude/skills and follow you across all projects. Project skills go in .claude/skills inside a repository and are shared with anyone who clones it
Skills load on demand — unlike CLAUDE.md (which loads into every conversation) or slash commands (which require explicit invocation), skills activate automatically when Claude recognizes the situation
If you find yourself explaining the same thing to Claude repeatedly, that’s a skill waiting to be written

A skill is a markdown file that teaches Claude how to do something once. Claude then applies that knowledge automatically whenever it’s relevant.

What Skills Are

Skills are folders of instructions and resources that Claude Code can discover and use to handle tasks more accurately.

Each skill lives in a SKILL.md file with a name and description in its frontmatter.
Example:
```
---
name: pr-review
description: Reviews pull requests for code quality. Use when reviewing PRs or checking code changes.
---
```
- The description is how Claude decides whether to use the skill.
  - When you ask Claude to review a PR, it matches your request against available skill descriptions and finds the relevant one.
  - Claude reads your request, compares it to all available skill descriptions, and activates the ones that match.
Below the frontmatter, you write the actual instructions or whatever Claude needs to know for that task.

You can store skills in different places depending on who needs them:

Personal skills go in ~/.claude/skills (your home directory).
- These follow you across all your projects — your commit message style, your documentation format, how you like code explained.
Project skills go in .claude/skills inside the root directory of your repository.
- Anyone who clones the repo gets these skills automatically. This is where team standards live, like your company’s brand guidelines, preferred fonts, and colors for web design.
- Project skills get committed to version control alongside your code, so the whole team shares them.

CLAUDE.md files load into every conversation. For example, if you want Claude to always use TypeScript’s strict mode, that goes in CLAUDE.md.
Skills are automatic and task-specific.
- SKills load on demand when they match your request.
  When Claude matches a skill to your request, you’ll see it load in the terminal:
- Claude only loads the name and description initially, so they don’t fill up your entire context window.
  - E.g., Your PR review checklist doesn’t need to be in context when you’re debugging — it loads when you actually ask for a review.
Slash commands require you to explicitly type them. Skills don’t. Claude applies them when it recognizes the situation.

The rule of thumb: If you find yourself explaining the same thing to Claude repeatedly, that’s a skill waiting to be written.

Skills work best for specialized knowledge that applies to specific tasks:

Last updated on Oct 15, 2026