On Tuesday night I ran my AI Systems Masterclass for about 30 business owners and showed the AI employees I use every week. Every one of them is a Claude Skill.
A skill is a written set of instructions Claude loads when your request matches it. Some of them carry files too, like a chart of accounts or a brand guide. Here are the seven examples from that session, what's inside each one and how to build your own.
What is a Claude Skill?
A Claude Skill is a folder with a file called SKILL.md that tells Claude when to use it and which steps to follow. It can also hold reference files and scripts.
Claude doesn't read every skill at the start of a chat. Anthropic's docs describe three stages: Claude sees each skill's name and one-line description, loads the full instructions only when your request matches, and opens any extra files only when the instructions point to them. So the description is the only part Claude sees before it decides to use the skill, which is why it's worth writing carefully.
Skills are available on the Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, and they need code execution and file creation turned on under Settings > Capabilities. You'll find yours under Customize > Skills, and you can type / in the message box to pick one yourself.
What are some examples of Claude Skills for business?
These are the seven I showed on Tuesday, in roughly the order I ran them.
1. Follower Email Drafter
I had around 8,000 Instagram followers and a couple hundred contacts in my CRM, and I had no idea who was in both. Claude pulled my follower list with Apify, worked out real names from usernames with a low, medium or high confidence score, and checked them against my contacts in GoHighLevel.
That gave me a warmest leads list of about 40 to 50 people who follow me and are already in my pipeline. Then the Follower Email Drafter wrote a personal email draft for each one in Gmail, changing the message based on their stage in the CRM and whether they'd been to a webinar. Everything stays a draft. I read them and send them myself.
2. Sales Call Analyzer
This one reads a sales call transcript and coaches me using frameworks from sales coaches I'd study anyway, like Chris Voss, Alex Hormozi, Jeremy Miner and Tony Robbins. I uploaded their frameworks into the skill so the feedback isn't generic AI advice.
The output comes back in the same format every time: an honest read, what worked, a score, three moments that cost me, smaller leaks and what was winnable. My calls are recorded in Granola, so Claude can pull the transcript without me downloading anything.
3. Content Distiller
The Content Distiller reads my meeting and webinar transcripts and pulls out the stories and ideas worth turning into content. On Tuesday it went through 17 Granola transcripts and came back with 93 content ideas, each one tagged for the newsletter, ads or social.
That's a lot of reading, so Claude split the work across five sub-agents to finish it. And every idea is something I've already said on a call, so it sounds like me instead of a list Claude made up.
4. Newsletter writer and voice skill
These are two skills that run together. The newsletter skill holds the structure I like: the hook, the story, the lesson it teaches, the call to action and a PS, plus a list of weak hooks and things to avoid. The voice skill holds how I talk: my phrases, the words I never use, no em dashes and no emojis.
The newsletter comes out about 90 to 95% ready. I still read it and change a word or two before it goes out.
If you're really good at one specific type of work, that's what you write into a skill. If I hired the best newsletter writer in the world, I'd want their process sitting in that file.
5. Scroll Stopper Ads
This skill holds my brand: the logo, the colors, the kind of ad creative I like and don't like, and every size I need for Instagram and Facebook (square, portrait and landscape). It works with Claude Design to build the ad images from the newsletter and content ideas the first two skills produced.
6. Proposal Writer
I built this one for a sample deck and porch company. A contractor walks the property, records the conversation with the homeowner on his phone and takes a photo of his hand sketch. The Proposal Writer reads the transcript and the sketch and turns them into a three-tier proposal, priced from the company's pricing book, materials catalog and past projects, with the HOA rules factored in.
The homeowner gets a proposal built around what they said on the walkthrough instead of a napkin sketch and a spreadsheet with a $30,000 number at the bottom.
7. AI Bookkeeper
The AI Bookkeeper reads five files every time it runs: a company profile, the chart of accounts, a vendor master list, categorization rules and expense history. I drop in a credit card statement and say I'm ready to do the May 2026 transactions, and those words alone are enough for Claude to pull in the bookkeeper.
One of the rules I gave it: if you're 90% sure or higher, code it. Below 90%, flag it for a person. On my dad's business, Carolina Wood Carvings, the last run was 187 transactions and he only had to review 14.
What do the best Claude Skills have in common?
Looking across those seven, the ones that work share a few traits:
- One job. The Sales Call Analyzer doesn't write follow-up emails. A narrow job makes the output consistent.
- A description with trigger words. The bookkeeper kicked in on Tuesday just because of the words I used to ask for it.
- Reference files made of concrete data. A vendor list and a chart of accounts beat a paragraph about how you like your books done.
- A fixed output format. Same sections in the same order every time, so you know where to look.
- A clear point where a person steps in. Drafts only for email, and the 90% rule for the books.
How do you make your own Claude Skill?
Someone asked in the chat on Tuesday how to create a markdown skill file. My answer was to ask Claude, because it will walk you through it, and that's the right question to be asking.
Here's the order I'd follow:
- Pick one task you do every week and dread.
- Write down how you do it, step by step. If you've never done this, start with how to write an SOP AI can follow.
- Paste that SOP into Claude and ask it to turn it into a skill with a clear name and description.
- Add the files the job needs, like your price sheet, your vendor list or two examples of finished work.
- Save it under Customize > Skills and run it on this week's task.
- Read the output closely and fix anything it got wrong in the instructions or the files.
The first version takes an afternoon. After that it's small updates.
How do you keep a Claude Skill getting better?
I think a lot of people expect to build an AI employee once and be done. You actually have to keep training it, the same way you would with a person you hired.
At the end of the bookkeeper demo I typed this: before you update this skill, can you let me know the things you learned during this chat, and then I'll tell you what I want you to remember, and we'll update the skill together.
It's a bit like asking your kid what they learned at school today. The question jogs the memory. Claude listed what it learned about which vendors and subscriptions go where, I told it which ones to keep, and it handed back an updated skill, so next month it should flag fewer.
How do skills fit with Claude Projects, connectors and schedules?
A skill holds how to do one task. That's level 1 on the four levels of an AI employee, the contractor, which is a skill running in a plain chat.
Level 2, the trained employee, runs that same skill inside a Claude Project that holds your company's files and pricing. I covered that setup in how to set up Claude Projects for your business. Level 3 connects it to your tools, like Granola for the Sales Call Analyzer or Gmail and GoHighLevel for the Follower Email Drafter. Level 4 puts it on a schedule, like a sales call review that runs at the end of every day.
Skills come first because every other level is running one.
Where should you start?
Start with the task you'd most like to stop doing by hand. For a lot of owners that's email or social media content. Email management was the top answer in my masterclass poll, and social media content was in the top three.
Write it down, turn it into a skill, run it on this week's work and ask it what it learned. If you'd rather build your skills with me in the room, that's what the AI Operating System is. It's six live sessions where we install working AI systems in your business, starting with the skills you'll use every week.
