🛠️ Write Your First Claude Skill In 15 Minutes

Somewhere on your phone is a note full of good prompts. The enquiry one, the quote one, the one with the rules you always forget. Every time you need one, you fetch it, paste it, fill it in.

A Skill is the same knowledge installed. You write your process down once, it lives in Claude, and from then on you say “draft the quote for the Wilsons” and it already knows your prices, your tone and the question you always ask.

The bit nobody mentions: a Skill is a set of instructions with a name on it. No code involved. By the end of this page you’ll have one, switched on and working.

One honest thing first. Skills are a paid plan feature (Pro, around £20 a month). If you’re on the free plan, skip to the no-install version at the bottom, which gets you most of the way there and costs nothing.

Step 1: Switch the plumbing on (1 min)

Go to Settings, find Capabilities, and make sure code execution and file creation is turned on. Skills will not work without it, and it’s off for some accounts by default.

Step 2: Pick a repeat offender (2 min)

Not your cleverest job. Your most repeated one. The thing you’ve explained to Claude the same way ten times:

• New enquiry replies
• Quotes
• The Friday invoice chase
• Meeting notes turned into a follow-up email
• Turning a job into a social post

Repetition is what makes installing worth it. Pick one now.

Step 3: Build it with Claude (8 min)

Find the Skills list. It sits in Settings, under Customize on most accounts and under Features on others, and Anthropic shuffle these menus about, so if it isn’t in one look in the other. You want the page listing the Skills on your account. Click the plus, choose to create a skill, and pick the option to build it with Claude. It’s a conversation, not a file to write.

Then paste this in.

Nick this one:

You're building me a Skill I'll use every week, so ask before you assume. The job: [for example "replying to new enquiries for my mobile dog grooming round"].

What you need from me: my prices, the question I always have to ask, my tone, and the phrases I hate. Ask me anything you need to know before you write anything, then write the Skill.

The Skill itself must:
1. Have a name and a description clear enough that you know when to use it without me saying its name.
2. Follow my steps in order, using only the prices and facts I give you. Never invent a price.
3. Include my tone rules and my banned phrases as hard rules.
4. Say what to do when the job doesn't fit, rather than guessing.

Then give me:
5. The finished Skill, saved and switched on in my Skills list.
6. The exact words I should type in a normal chat to make it fire, and one real example I can test it with right now.

Rules: plain English, British English spelling, under 300 words in the Skill itself. No filler sections. Ask me up to three questions before you start.

Answer its questions honestly. Vague answers make a vague Skill.

Prefer writing the file yourself? A Skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file in it, like this:

---
name: enquiry-reply
description: Drafts replies to new customer enquiries. Use whenever I paste an enquiry or ask for an enquiry reply.
---

You're helping me reply to enquiries for [business name], a [what you do, for whom].

When I give you an enquiry, draft a reply that:
1. Thanks them and answers their actual question first.
2. Uses only these prices: [service, £X. Service, £Y]. Never invent one.
3. Asks the thing I always need to know: [date? size? location?].
4. Offers the next step: [booking link, or "I'll ring you Thursday"].

Tone: [warm, straight-talking]. Never say [phrases you hate]. Under 120 words. If it's outside what I do, say so kindly and suggest [alternative].

Zip the folder so SKILL.md sits at the top of the zip, not inside another folder, then upload it in the same Skills screen. That one detail is behind most failed uploads.

Step 4: Prove it works (4 min)

1. Check the Skill is toggled on in your Skills list.
2. Open a new chat.
3. Paste in a real enquiry from last month and say “reply to this”.
4. Read what comes back: right prices, right question, right tone?

If it fires and gets something wrong, tell Claude what to change and have it update the Skill. If it doesn’t fire at all, the description is too vague about when to use it. Fix that line first, every time.

That edit loop is the entire craft. Your second Skill will take eight minutes. Your fifth will take four.

What it looks like when it’s working

Say you’re a VA who gets the same few enquiries forever: what do you cover, how many hours do I need, how fast do you reply. Your Skill might be 200 words: your package prices, your usual starting-hours line, always ask what’s currently falling through the cracks, and no exclamation marks. Then each reply starts with “reply to this” and a read-through, instead of a blank email. Same answers you always gave, minus the typing.

The honest bit

A Skill is instructions, not judgement. A bad rule gets followed beautifully, every time, so read the first few outputs closely.

It can’t know what you left out. Week one is mostly discovering which rules lived in your head instead of the file, and adding them.

Only install Skills you wrote or genuinely trust. An installed Skill shapes everything Claude does with that job. A random one off the internet deserves the same suspicion as a random email attachment.

The no-install version, if you’re not paying yet

You can’t install a Skill on the free plan, but you can get most of the benefit, because the value was always the written-down process rather than the installing.

1. Write the instructions once. Use the prompt in step 3 and ask for the finished instructions as text instead of a Skill. Your prices, your tone, the question you always ask, the thing never to say.
2. Save them somewhere you’ll find them. A note on your phone, a doc, wherever you already keep things.
3. Paste them at the top of a new chat whenever you do that job, then give it the real enquiry.

What you lose: the paste, every time. When you do go paid, those instructions become your first Skill in about two minutes, because the hard part is already written.

Tonight

Do step 3 with whichever job you thought of first, or the no-install version if you’re on the free plan. One working Skill teaches you more than any guide about them, including this one.

That’s one job installed rather than re-explained. Built For Freedom does that to a whole week, one small move a day for thirty days on your own business, and it opens in rounds from the waitlist.