Claude Skills Explained - Step-by-Step Tutorial for Beginners

Move over ChatGPT, Claude just released Agent  Skills. That means you can add custom abilities  

to Claude, Claude Desktop, and Claude Code.  This is perfect when you have repetitive tasks  

that you want to save time on, like checking your  email for anything relevant and drafting replies.  

In this video, you'll learn how to use Claude's  built-in skills, create your own skills,  

and connect them to other apps. I'm David, and I  work with Kevin to bring you more great tutorials  

like this one. Let's dive in. First, head  over to Claude.ai, sign in using the box here,  

and I'll see you on the other side. Your  screen should now look like this. Now,  

before we get into things, you need to have a  paid account. You can check your subscription  

by going to your profile in the bottom left,  then clicking on upgrade plan. All you need  

is a pro account or a team account. Once you've  confirmed your subscription, click on your profile  

icon again, and this time go to settings. Look  towards the end of the list for a section called  

capabilities and click on it. Then scroll  down until you get to the skills section.  

Each of these line items is a separate skill.  Claude comes with several built-in skills,  

which you can scroll through on this page. Before  we leave, make sure the skill creator skill is  

turned on. I'm also going to turn on the theme  factory and then scroll up to canvas design and  

the artifacts builder. Now we're in business.  Let's go through some built-in skills first.

Click on the red plus button to  start a new chat. Let's trigger  

Claude's PowerPoint skill with the following  prompt. This is a situation you've probably  

run into before. You've got an outline for a  PowerPoint deck, but you don't want to spend  

a bunch of time designing it. Let's submit  the prompt and walk through what happens.

First, it recognizes PowerPoint creation  as a skill, and it reads the skill file,  

which we'll talk about later, to understand  how to execute that skill. That skill file  

taught Claude a set of steps and a set of tools  to use to create the PowerPoint deck. And now it  

knows how to fulfill the task. Claude shares  its design choices with you and gets to work.

It'll take a few minutes,  so let's hit fast forward.

And we're back with Claude's first attempt at the  deck. Now, as you scroll through this, it's not  

fantastic by any stretch of the imagination, but  it is a decent first attempt. Let's not forget  

though, the point of the skill is that you could  specify the content for the deck and Claude would  

figure out all the design choices for you. But say  now you wanna make some edits with a prompt like  

this. I want more patterns and colors, and I want  my brand's primary colors to be there. Now, when  

I submit this prompt, Claude goes to the skill we  turned on earlier called theme factory. That's so  

it can create a theme that it then applies to  the PowerPoint deck. And after a few minutes,  

you'll see that Claude has applied our new theme  to the rest of the slides. Did you notice that I  

didn't need to set up custom instructions or use  a specific project? That's what's great about  

skills. No matter where you are, Claude looks  at your prompt to see if a skill can handle it.  

Once it identifies that skill, then it follows  that skill's instructions. That means for any  

workflow you have, you package it up once as  a skill and can reuse it multiple times. Now,  

this applies at three levels, built-in skills like  you just saw, your own skills like we're about to  

create, and every Claude surface that now accepts  skills, including Claude desktop and Claude code.

Now, let's level you up and create your first  skill together. We're back in Claude now, and I've  

started a new chat by clicking on the new chat  button. Now, remember that skill creator skill  

that we turned on earlier? Now it's time to use  it. Type into the prompt box, make a new skill and  

press enter. After a few seconds, Claude will read  its skill creator guide and then ask you questions  

to create your skill. Now, in my experience, these  questions differ slightly every time you run this  

skill. So let's run through the questions one at  a time, and then I'll show you a quick tip to make  

sure that Claude really understands what you want.  Question number one, what workflow should this  

skill handle? Let's make an AI FOMO summarizer.  There are so many AI tools coming out every day.  

Let's use Claude to figure out which ones to pay  attention to and which to pass on. Number two,  

give me some concrete examples. This also  tells Claude when to use this skill. So for  

OpenAI's Atlas web browser, the trigger is AI FOMO  hyphen, openAI Atlas hyphen, the link to the press  

release. Then number three, what makes this skill  unique? Claude should use what it knows about me  

to determine the relevance of any AI tool. And if  it doesn't know enough, then we give it permission  

to ask up to three follow-up questions. Before we  submit, let's make sure Claude really has enough  

information. Here's the key question, what  else should I clarify? If you don't ask this,  

the quality of your skill will suffer. So Claude  asked a few follow-up questions. I'll answer these  

quickly, and Claude should now start building  this skill for us. After a couple of seconds,  

it confirms it has everything it needs. Let's  see what it comes up with. So it's been about 45  

seconds and it created this skill file. To install  the skill, follow these steps. First, click the  

download button. Then go back to your skill  settings by clicking on your profile icon, then  

click on settings, then click on capabilities.  Finally, scroll down to the skills section. Click  

that button that says upload skill, then take  the file that you just downloaded and drag and  

drop it into the skill upload pane. After a few  seconds, you should see that the skill uploaded  

successfully and you'll see it here on the screen.  Now let's put it to the test. I'll open a new chat  

by clicking the plus button, then I'll type in  the magic words and click the submit button.

This time, Claude finds our new skill and starts  executing it to give us its recommendation.

Let's see what it came up with. You can  look at its process as I scroll down,  

but here's the actual report. We have a FOMO score  of six out of 10 and the recommendation is worth  

exploring. Then down below, it summarizes  what it is, how relevant it is to my work,  

my personal productivity, and a couple of other  interesting sections. Now most times you won't be  

satisfied with the skills result on the first try.  So let me quickly show you how to modify a skill.  

I'll click this button in the top left to open the  sidebar, then I'll go back to the chat where we  

created this skill. Now, if this box pops up for  you on the right with a bunch of garbled text, you  

can safely ignore it by clicking the X. To make  modifications, just ask Claude for your updates.  

So if I want to add a separate score out of 10  for work relevance and personal productivity,  

Claude will process that instruction and update  the skill. When it's done, you can download  

the skill again and re-upload it using the  process I just walked you through to update it.  

Skills can also call MCP servers, which means  Claude can interact with other apps like Outlook,  

Gmail, CRM Tools, and many, many more. Here  I have an MCP server I built for QuickBooks  

Online. So Claude can access data directly from  QuickBooks to give me insights on my income and  

expenses. QuickBooks Online is also the sponsor of  today's video. If you're just starting a business  

and you don't know much about how to handle your  finances, QuickBooks Online is a great place to  

start. I personally use them for about seven years  and found it really takes that headache out of tax  

season. And it helps me save more money too.  And now with Claude, I have a skill that helps  

me summarize my monthly finances. It's like the  skill we just created. I've just instructed it a  

little differently to get data from QuickBooks.  You can get started with QuickBooks Online by  

using the link in the description below. Now let  me show you how to connect your apps to skills.

Let's build a skill that summarizes recent  unread emails that demand your attention. First,  

we need to connect Claude to our work Gmail  account. Here in a new chat, click the search  

and tools icon that's second from the left in  the prompt box. Then click on Gmail search.  

Now click continue and follow the prompts to  connect your account. If you did it right,  

you should see the successfully connected to  Gmail notification in the top right. Already  

this is powerful. I can ask Claude questions  about what's in my email and it will go find  

the answer. But now we can take that one  step further and package it into a skill.

So one more time today, let's ask Claude to make  a new skill. The questions it asked this time are  

slightly different, but you know how to answer  these questions now from the last section. So  

let's skip ahead to installing the skill. Okay,  I've just finished installing the skill. Let's  

test it out in a new chat. I'll write the magic  trigger words for this skill, which is Gmail  

summary and then a timeframe, which is yesterday.  And let's give it a few minutes to do its job.  

It's read the skill and it's searched through my  messages. And with all that information, it's put  

together a summary of my most important emails.  And it's also drafted sample responses. Before  

we wrap up, I've got one last tip to show you.  And it has to do with the trigger words for your  

skill. This feature is still early and sometimes  Claude won't find your skill. In my testing,  

Claude has a higher chance of finding the skill  if I use the skill name in the prompt directly.  

So consider that if you start having issues  with reliability. Let us know what skills  

you're gonna write in the comments section and  check out a 50% off QuickBooks Online discount  

in the description below. You can also find all  of the skills I created in this video in the  

resources section of the description. I'm David  DeWinter and I'll see you in the next video.