What Are Claude Skills?
Everything you need to know before your first purchase.
Where Do Skills Work?
Claude skills work across the entire Claude ecosystem. Whether you use Claude Code in your terminal, Claude Desktop on macOS or Windows, claude.ai in your browser, or Claude Cowork for autonomous tasks — your skills work everywhere.
Skills are plain text files that live in your .claude/skills/ folder. Every Claude app reads them automatically. Install once, use anywhere.
Skills are available on all Claude plans, including Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise.
What is a Skill?
A skill is a structured knowledge package that gives Claude a new capability.
Claude out of the box is a brilliant generalist. It can write code, answer questions, and help with many tasks. But it doesn’t know your specific sales methodology. It doesn’t have an evidence-based career coaching framework. It can’t create n8n workflows using best practices from 1,500 real templates.
A skill changes that. When you install a skill, you’re giving Claude specialized knowledge and structured workflows that transform it from a generalist into a domain expert.
Skills are to Claude what apps are to your smartphone. Your phone can do a lot out of the box — but the apps are what make it indispensable.
What’s Inside a Skill?
A professional skill is not a single prompt. It’s an entire system. Here’s what you typically find inside:
my-skill/
├── SKILL.md ← The core: instructions, methodology, workflows
├── references/ ← Knowledge base: data, frameworks, examples
│ ├── methodology.md
│ ├── case-studies.md
│ └── ...
├── scripts/ ← Automation: Python/shell scripts
│ └── calculator.py
├── assets/ ← Templates: document templates, checklists
│ └── template.md
└── README.md ← Quick-start guideThe SKILL.md file is what Claude reads to understand its new capability. The references/ folder contains the domain knowledge. The scripts/ folder has executable tools. Together, they create a complete working system — not a one-shot prompt.
Why Use Skills?
Consistent results every time
Without a skill, asking Claude to “qualify this deal” gives different results each time. With a sales skill, it uses a structured scoring framework — same methodology, every time.
Deep expertise on demand
The Vera Career Coach skill contains 6 evidence-based assessments backed by academic research. You get coaching methodology that would cost €200/session from a human coach.
Immediate productivity
Install a skill in 30 seconds. No training, no onboarding, no learning curve. Just mention the skill and Claude knows what to do.
How to Install
Download the ZIP
After purchase, you receive a ZIP file via email. Save it anywhere on your computer.
Claude Code: extract to the skills folder
# macOS / Linux
unzip skill-name.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/# Windows (PowerShell)
Expand-Archive skill-name.zip -DestinationPath $env:USERPROFILE\.claude\skills\Claude Desktop / claude.ai: add via Settings
Open Settings → Features → Skills → click “Add” and upload the ZIP file. It contains the skill folder with SKILL.md and all supporting subfolders. The skill appears in your list immediately.
Start using it
Mention the skill by name in your conversation, and Claude will use it automatically. No restart required.