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skill-creator

Guide for creating effective skills. This skill should be used when users want to create a new skill (or update an existing skill) that extends Claude's capabilities with specialized knowledge, workflows, or tool integrations.

Author

@anthropics

Category

AI Skill Development

Install

Hot:1243

Download and extract to your skills directory

Copy command and send to OpenClaw for auto-install:

Download and install this skill https://openskills.cc/api/download?slug=anthropics-skills-skill-creator&locale=en&source=copy

Skill Creator - The Complete Guide to Creating Claude Skills

Skill Overview


Skill Creator is a guide for creating effective skills that helps users extend Claude's capabilities, turning a general AI agent into a domain expert through specialized knowledge, workflows, and tool integrations.

Use Cases

  • Creating domain-specific skills: When you need to build a skill for a specific domain (such as finance, law, engineering) that contains specialized knowledge and workflows, Skill Creator provides end-to-end guidance from design to packaging.

  • Integrating tools and APIs: When you need Claude to be proficient with particular file formats, APIs, or tools, this guide helps you build a skill package that includes scripts and reference materials.

  • Encapsulating enterprise knowledge: When you need to integrate company-specific business logic, data patterns, or policy documents into Claude’s workflows, Skill Creator offers best practices and structural templates.

    • Core Features

  • Skill architecture design: Provides clear specifications for skill structure, including the required SKILL.md file and optional scripts/, references/, assets/ directories, helping developers understand how to organize skill content.

  • Progressive disclosure principle: Teaches how to efficiently manage the context window using a three-layer loading system (metadata → SKILL.md → bundled resources), ensuring relevant information is loaded only when needed.

  • Complete development workflow: A six-step process from understanding the skill’s purpose, planning reusable content, initializing the skill, implementing edits, packaging and validation, to iterative optimization — covering the full lifecycle of skill creation.

    • Frequently Asked Questions

    What is a skill in Claude?


    A skill is a modular, self-contained package that extends Claude’s capabilities by providing specialized knowledge, workflows, and tools. You can think of a skill as an “onboarding guide” for a specific domain or task — they transform Claude from a general-purpose agent into a professional agent with procedural knowledge.

    What should SKILL.md contain?


    SKILL.md consists of two parts: a YAML frontmatter (including the required name and description fields) and a Markdown body. The name and description are the primary mechanism Claude uses to determine when to trigger the skill, so they should clearly and comprehensively describe the skill’s functionality and usage scenarios. The body should include instructions for using the skill and its bundled resources and is loaded only after the skill is triggered.

    How do you package a skill for distribution?


    Use the scripts/package_skill.py script to package the skill. The script automatically validates the skill (checking YAML format, required fields, naming conventions, etc.). Once validation passes, it creates a .skill file (which is effectively a zip file with the .skill extension) containing all files and preserving the proper directory structure for distribution.