Have you heard about Claude’s new “skill” system? It feels like one of those features that’s quietly been released but has the potential to be a massive deal. And I’m serious when I say it’s not just for engineers.
Actually, I think the real magic here is for the rest of us. For all those little repetitive tasks we do every single day.
Let’s be real, the world of AI tools is getting… crowded. Custom GPTs, plugins, slash commands, apps… it’s a lot. So when a new one pops up, the first question is always, “Do we really need another one?”
I want to walk you through what these skills are, why they’re different, and how you can actually use them for normal, day-to-day work. Because that’s where I think they truly shine.
So, What Exactly is a “Skill”?
Think of a skill as a self-contained little recipe. It’s a package that holds a set of instructions, maybe some data (like a CSV file), and even little programs or scripts. The whole idea is to create a unit of work that you can use over and over again, consistently.
Imagine you write a weekly newsletter. You want the format to be exactly the same every time, right? With a skill, you could have a script handle the formatting, while the AI part just gathers the information. It makes the output predictable. Deterministic. That’s a huge win for repeatable tasks.
Where Do They Fit in This Mess?
Okay, so you have all these tools. On one side, you’ve got things like custom GPTs. On the other, you have developer-focused things like plugins and slash commands. It’s confusing.
Claude’s skills kind of sit right in the middle. But here’s the key difference that took me a minute to grasp:
Skills are for internal work. They’re designed to work with the data and instructions you give them, inside their own little box.
They aren’t meant to reach out to external services or APIs. In fact, they’re heavily restricted from accessing the network at all. This is the opposite of most plugins, which are all about connecting to the outside world.
The way it works is also pretty clever. When you start a chat, the AI doesn’t load up every single detail of every skill you have. That would eat up your context window. Instead, it just knows a one-sentence description for each skill.
Then, when you ask for something—say, “Can you get info from this PowerPoint file?”—the model sees that and thinks, “Oh, wait… I have a skill that sounds like it could handle that.” It then “wakes up” the skill, reads the more detailed instructions inside, and figures out how to use it. It’s a progressive way of loading information only when it’s needed. Pretty smart.
The Good, The Bad, and The Workaround
When you first open Claude, you’ll find that some skills are already installed by default—for working with PDFs, Excel, Word docs, and PowerPoint.
And I have to say, the PowerPoint one is probably the best slide-creation system I’ve seen from an AI. Because it’s not just the AI trying to guess how to make a slide; it’s using actual scripts to programmatically build the presentation. You can see where this is all going. It’s a very, very good start.
But… there’s a catch. A big one.
The lack of network access is really limiting. I get it, it’s a security measure. They’ve put the skills in a tight sandbox. But it feels frustrating. I found myself wishing they’d just give us a pop-up, like they do for other tools, asking, “Are you sure you want to let this skill run?” That simple approval step would open up so much potential.
That said, I did find a little workaround. While a skill can’t just call an API, it can use Claude’s built-in web search tool.
I built a skill called “Show Search” to get info on TV shows and movies. Instead of hitting an API, I just instructed the skill to use web search to find all the details I wanted—critic scores, revenue, audience sentiment, you name it. It works! It’s a bit clunky, but it gets the job done.
Honestly, it just makes me think we’re heading toward a world of full-blown AI “apps,” and this is a solid first step in that direction.
The Real Killer App: Your Everyday Workflows
Okay, forget the fancy developer stuff for a second. Here’s what got me really excited.
Imagine you manage a bunch of franchises. Every week, you get a report with sales data. You have to do the same analysis, create the same charts, and look for the same trends. Every. Single. Week.
This is what I call “front office work.” We all have versions of it. Repetitive tasks that are just begging for automation.
So, I created a “Franchisee” skill. I gave it a sample (mock) data file and told it what kind of reports I wanted. I asked it to pull contact info for everyone in the “Midwest”—a term that wasn’t even in the data file. The AI had to use its intelligence to figure out which states counted as the Midwest.
It worked perfectly.
Then, I asked it to run some plots. And here’s the magic: because the skill contains the actual Python programs to generate the charts, they come out looking exactly the same every single time.
This is it. This is the sweet spot.
If you run a newsletter, create weekly reports, or build dashboards, you can create a skill that defines the output once. Then, every week, you just drop in your new data file and say, “Run my normal output.” And you’ll get the same, consistent result. No fuss.
Is it a ChatGPT killer? No, not in this iteration. But for this kind of zero-code, repeatable workflow, it’s a fantastic start. It’s so much better than trying to figure out how to host some complicated automation yourself.
It’s a glimpse into a future where we can all build our own little tools to handle the boring stuff, and I’m here for it.
What do you think? Is there a repetitive task in your life you’d want to turn into a skill? Let me know.