Let’s be real. Claude skills are probably a bigger deal than MCPs or agents, especially for certain tasks.
So, I want to break down why that is… and then show you five skills that are already changing the way I build things. For real.
If you’re new here, my name is Sean. I did the whole startup thing, took a detour to help scale a marketing company to 8-figures, and now I’m back in the AI world, figuring out what actually works. I’m all about tangible, grounded use cases for these tools—no fluff.
In this article, we’ll get into why skills can be more powerful than agents, and then I’ll walk you through five of my favorites, how to find them, and how to use them. If you’re into AI and “vibe coding”—you know, squeezing every last drop of real value out of your tools—this one’s for you.
First Off, Why Skills Over Agents?
Okay, so what’s the big deal? Why am I so hyped about skills?
Well, for starters, they’re incredibly token-efficient. They’re engineered to only pull in the context they need, right when they need it. No wasted overhead.
They’re also automatically invoked. This is huge. You don’t have to remember to call them with a slash command. Claude is smart enough to see what you’re doing and say, “Oh, I have a skill for this,” and just… use it.
This makes them perfect for procedural work. Think about any task you do over and over. A step-by-step system. That’s where a skill shines. It’s about the consistent application of a standard, every single time.
So, while an MCP or an agent gives an AI access to external tools, a skill is more about teaching the AI how to use the tools it already has in a very specific, systematized way. It operates right inside your main chat, not in some separate context window.
Anytime you have a repeatable process that needs to be done the same way, every time… that’s a job for a skill.
Alright, with that said, let’s get into the five I’m already loving.
Getting Set Up
First, you’ve gotta enable skills. It’s easy.
Go to your Claude desktop settings, find “Capabilities,” and you’ll see a toggle for “Skills.” Flip that on.
Now, inside your editor, you can type /plugin and you’ll see an option to “add a marketplace.” This is how you get access to collections of skills. For the ones we’re talking about, you’ll want to add the anthropic-skills repository. Just paste that in, install the “example skills” collection, and give it a quick restart.
(I’ll have links for all this in the description of the video).
Skill #1: The Skill Creator
This is so meta, and I love it. There’s a skill… for creating new skills.
It guides you through the process, asking you the right questions to make sure your new skill is robust. Instead of just winging it, it helps you define exactly what you need.
I turned this on and immediately tried it out. I said: “I’d like to create a skill so that my UI guidelines get applied to any component that gets built. Can you help me with that?”
It started asking me questions:
- What kind of component is it? React? Vue?
- What are the specific UI guidelines? Is there a design doc?
- Are there other assets to include?
- Can you give me examples of when this skill should be used?
It’s a conversation. It keeps digging until it has everything it needs. I told it my design docs were always inside the project, and it asked for the path.
Once it’s done, it spits out a zip file. You unzip it, drop the folder into a .claude/skills directory in your project, and you’re good to go.
I immediately used it to build a command palette for searching prompts in my app, and I could see it automatically pick up my new UI guidelines skill. It just knew to follow the rules I had just created. So cool.
Skill #2: The Brainstormer
This one comes from a great GitHub repo called “superpowers” by a creator named Ora. It’s full of awesome skills for Claude.
The “Brainstorming” skill is a game-changer, especially if you’re a “vibe coder” like me—someone who isn’t a traditionally trained software engineer. It takes a rough idea and helps you flesh it out with a structured, Socratic dialogue.
When I started building my command palette, it kicked in and started asking me questions to refine the plan:
- What actions should the palette support?
- What about version history for the prompts?
It forces you to think through the details before you write a single line of code. It helps you get disciplined.
After our little brainstorming session, it produced a comprehensive system design: functional requirements, architecture decisions, component hierarchy, data flow, state management, file structure, dependencies… everything. I could then either keep using the skill to build it or hand that spec off to another tool.
Skill #3: The Changelog Generator
You know the fear, right? You’re a vibe coder, you push something to production, and a bug pops up. But you have no idea where it came from because your commit history is a mess.
I’ve been there. It’s a common knock against us from traditional devs, and honestly… they’re not wrong.
That’s why I love the “Changelog Generator” skill.
Anytime a feature is committed, this skill automatically creates a user-friendly changelog. You can look back and see exactly what commits were involved in a feature and what changes were made.
Right now, it’s creating a customer-facing changelog for me—something I could post on a blog. But you could easily tweak the skill to create a developer-focused log with commit hashes, file changes, and all the technical details. It’s all about creating that paper trail so you’re never lost again.
Skill #4: The Systematic Debugger
Okay, so you’ve built your feature, but… something’s broken. In my case, I built the command palette, and it worked, but it was throwing an error.
I copied the error, pasted it into Claude, and told it to debug the issue.
This is where the “Systematic Debugging” skill comes in. It doesn’t just guess. It follows a four-phase framework:
- Investigate: Find the root cause.
- Analyze: Look for patterns.
- Test: Form a hypothesis for a fix and test it.
- Implement: Apply the solution.
It’s a structured, intelligent approach to fixing bugs. My issue was pretty simple, but for those tricky, hard-to-pin-down bugs, this skill is an absolute lifesaver. It makes sure it truly understands the problem before it tries to solve it.
And yep, after it ran, my command palette worked perfectly. No more error.
Skill #5: The Simplification Cascade
This last one is a bit more abstract, but it’s incredibly powerful.
Think about coding. There’s a gradient from an abstract concept (like “version history”) to a very concrete application (like “version history for my prompts”).
In one of my projects, I have version history for prompts. If I change a prompt, it saves the old version. Simple enough.
But now, what if I want to add an “agent library” or a “context library” to my app? And I want version history for those, too.
Do I build a whole new version history system for each one?
The obvious answer is no. I should abstract the “prompt-specific” stuff out and create one single, reusable VersionHistory component that can handle anything I throw at it.
But recognizing those opportunities for abstraction isn’t always easy, especially when you’re deep in the code.
That’s what the “Simplification Cascade” skill does. It helps you identify when you’re building things unnecessarily. It looks for patterns like:
- Multiple implementations of the same concept.
- Too many special cases and exceptions.
- Complicated rules that could be simplified.
It asks the question: “What if these are all the same thing, just viewed slightly differently?”
I used it on my app’s query logic, which I knew was getting a little clunky. The skill went to work and found 15 different independent ownership checks that could be abstracted into one. It found inefficiencies in my caching. It proposed huge improvements that will make my app faster, snappier, and just… better.
It helps you fight complexity and keep your codebase lean.
What Do You Think?
So there you have it. Five skills that are genuinely pretty cool, if you ask me. They’re helping me code smarter, faster, and with more discipline.
If you want to see more workflows like this, or maybe how we can combine skills with MCPs, let me know in the comments.
And if you liked this, you know the drill—subscribe for more videos.
See you in the next one.