Anthropic Skills

Anthropic Skills is a system that extends Claude's capabilities through installable, reusable workflows that run inside Claude Code. The Skills marketplace offers pre-built skills for common tasks like PDF processing, spreadsheet handling, and scheduled automation. The Skills SDK lets developers and power users build custom skills in TypeScript that Claude can trigger by name. Skills represent Anthropic's approach to making Claude programmable for specific recurring tasks without requiring full custom application development.

Anthropic launched Skills as an extension system for Claude Code in late 2025, filling a specific gap in the product. Claude Code is a powerful terminal coding agent, but most of what people use Claude for isn't software development. It's document processing, research compilation, data transformation, scheduling automation, and hundreds of other recurring tasks. Skills are how Anthropic makes Claude Code practical for those use cases without requiring users to build custom applications.

This profile covers the Skills system, the marketplace, and what the Skills SDK enables. If you're looking for Claude's conversational capabilities, that's covered in the Claude (web/app) profile.

How Skills work

Skills run inside Claude Code sessions. When you install a skill, it becomes an available capability that Claude can invoke when the context calls for it, or that you can trigger explicitly with a slash command like /pdf or /xlsx.

A skill is a packaged workflow. It knows what inputs to expect, what steps to execute, and how to produce the output you want. The difference from ad-hoc prompting: you don't have to explain the approach each time. The skill handles the methodology; you just tell Claude what you want done.

Skills can do things that conversational Claude can't, or can't do reliably on its own: run shell commands, process files at the system level, call external APIs with stored credentials, maintain state across a multi-step workflow, and schedule recurring tasks. These capabilities come from Claude Code's underlying access to the terminal environment and tool use capabilities.

The pre-built skills library

Anthropic provides a library of pre-built skills for common use cases. The library covers:

Document processing: PDF reading, extraction, combination, form filling, and OCR. The PDF skill handles the full range of things people need to do with PDF files without the user thinking through the right approach each time.

Spreadsheets: Reading, editing, formatting, and creating Excel and CSV files. The XLSX skill gives Claude reliable structured data manipulation that's more consistent than ad-hoc prompting for spreadsheet tasks.

Scheduling and automation: Creating recurring tasks that run Claude workflows on a schedule. The scheduled tasks skill lets you set up automations like "run this research task every Monday morning" without building custom infrastructure.

Memory management: The memory skill handles the consolidation and organization of Claude's memory files, preventing them from becoming stale or redundant over time.

Code review and simplification: Skills specifically tuned for code quality review that go beyond what general Claude coding assistance provides.

The library is growing. Anthropic adds new skills as patterns emerge from how Claude Code users actually work. The most popular workflows get packaged into skills; niche use cases are candidates for custom skill development.

The Skills SDK: building custom skills

For developers who need capabilities the pre-built library doesn't cover, the Skills SDK provides a TypeScript framework for building custom skills.

A skill in the SDK has three main components:

Description: What the skill does and when it should be invoked. This is what Claude reads to decide whether to suggest the skill for a given user request.

Parameters: What information the skill needs as input. These are defined as typed TypeScript interfaces that Claude populates from context or prompts the user for.

Handler: The actual execution logic, written in TypeScript with access to Claude's tool use capabilities, file system access, external APIs, and the shell environment.

The SDK handles the scaffolding: skill registration, parameter extraction from conversation context, error handling, and output formatting. A developer writing a custom skill focuses on the business logic rather than the integration plumbing.

Custom skills can range from simple (a text transformation that formats a specific type of report) to complex (a multi-step research pipeline that queries external APIs, synthesizes the results with Claude, and produces a structured output file). The TypeScript environment and Claude's tool use capabilities are the main building blocks.

Publishing and sharing skills

Custom skills can be kept private (personal use only), shared with a team (through a shared skill registry), or published publicly. Public skills go through a review process and become part of the discoverable library.

For teams standardizing how members use Claude for specific workflows, shared skill publication means everyone has the same reliable capability rather than each person developing their own approach to the same task.

How Skills fit into a larger Claude workflow

Skills don't replace conversational Claude. They extend Claude Code for specific, recurring tasks where a packaged, reliable approach beats ad-hoc prompting.

The practical distinction: use Claude's web app or mobile apps for conversation, research, drafting, and analysis that benefits from back-and-forth dialogue. Use Claude Code with Skills for tasks that are structured, repeatable, file-system-dependent, or that need to run on a schedule.

A knowledge worker's stack might look like: Claude Pro for daily conversational work, Claude Code installed for development and document processing tasks, Skills installed for the specific workflows they do most often. The Skills layer doesn't add cost beyond API usage; it adds reliability and speed to the workflows it covers.

Comparison with similar tools

Skills vs Dust

Dust is a platform for building AI-powered workflows for teams, with more team-oriented features: deployment, permissions, analytics, and integration with enterprise tools. Skills is more developer-focused and tied to Claude Code's terminal environment. If you're building team-wide AI workflow infrastructure, Dust offers more organizational controls. If you're a developer or power user who lives in Claude Code, Skills is the more native extension system.

Skills vs Lindy

Lindy focuses on workflow automation that connects to external tools through natural language configuration. Skills is specifically an extension system for Claude Code's capabilities. They're not direct competitors. A Lindy workflow might trigger an external CRM integration; a Skill extends what Claude Code can do with files and APIs in a development environment. They operate at different layers.

Skills vs Anthropic Computer Use

Computer use is Claude's capability to interact with a computer's graphical interface. Skills are packaged workflows that run in Claude Code's terminal environment. Skills typically don't need computer use unless the workflow requires interacting with a GUI application. For terminal-native tasks and API interactions, Skills is the right abstraction. For tasks that require navigating a web interface or GUI application, computer use is the relevant capability.

The developer experience

The Skills SDK is accessible to anyone comfortable with TypeScript. The barrier isn't particularly high if you have development experience, and Anthropic's documentation covers the SDK structure, available APIs, and deployment process.

The most practical entry point: install a few pre-built skills first and use them for a few weeks. The ones you use often, and the ones you wish did something slightly different, are the candidates for custom skill development. Building a custom skill that's a variation on a pre-built one is easier than building from scratch.

For teams, the shared registry feature is worth setting up early. Standardized skills mean everyone works the same way, which matters when multiple people are doing the same AI-assisted tasks and you want consistent output quality.

Key features

• Pre-built skill library covering common workflows
• Skills SDK for creating custom skills in TypeScript
• Skill discovery through the Claude Code interface
• One-click skill installation in Claude Code
• Skills trigger based on user request context
• Custom skill publishing for teams and individuals
• Integration with Claude's tool use and computer use capabilities
• Skill memory for persistent user preferences

Pros and cons

Who is Anthropic Skills for?

• Developers building custom Claude workflows for recurring tasks
• Power users extending Claude Code for domain-specific work
• Teams standardizing Claude capabilities across members
• Anyone who wants Claude to do specific multi-step tasks on request

Alternatives to Anthropic Skills

If Anthropic Skills isn't quite the right fit, the closest alternatives are claude-app , claude-code , anthropic-computer-use , and dust-tt . See our full Anthropic Skills alternatives page for side-by-side comparisons.