Make Your Own Skill

You do not need to be able to code to teach Claude something new. If you have a task you do the same way every time — a report you build, a way you tag assets, a format you always want — you can turn it into a skill that any teammate can then run. There are three ways to make one, and the newest is the easiest: you record yourself doing the task once, out loud, and Claude writes the skill.

The three ways to make one

All three produce the same thing. Route 1 and 2 are how almost everyone at MM should start — route 3 is mostly useful when a skill needs bundled files, like our Brand Guardian skill which carries logos and colour codes with it.

🎬 Route 1 — Record a Skill, fully explained

This is the one worth learning first. Instead of describing a process in words, you demonstrate it: Claude records your screen and your voice while you do the task once, then reads that recording and writes the skill itself. You approve or reject what it proposes.

Step by step

1. Open a Cowork task in Claude for Mac. Start it the way you would any task — and if the skill involves files, have the folder connected before you record.
2. Start the recording. There are two doors to the same place: click the + in the composer and choose “Record a skill”, or go to Customize > Skills, click Add, and choose “Record your screen”. Then click Start recording.
3. Leave your microphone on and talk. Anthropic is explicit that this is the difference between a mediocre skill and a good one: “Talk through what you’re doing while you record. Narration gives Claude context it can’t get from your screen alone, like why you skip a step or how you choose between two options.” You can mute or switch input with the microphone control if you need to.
4. Do the task, start to finish, the correct way. A recording runs for about 10 minutes, which is plenty for one task and not enough for three. Claude is learning from what it sees, so a fumbled or abandoned step teaches it the fumble.
5. Click Done, and let Claude review. Claude watches the recording back and works out what the repeatable process actually was.
6. Approve what it proposes. Claude comes back with a proposal card. If it decided this is something new you get Save or Dismiss. If it recognised the task as an existing skill it offers Update or Dismiss instead — which is how you improve a skill over time rather than piling up near-duplicates.
7. Test it before you trust it. Open a fresh task and ask for the thing in your own words, without naming the skill. If Claude picks it up, the description is doing its job. If it does not, the description needs work — see the description section below.

What makes a recording produce a genuinely good skill

💬 Route 2 — Talk it through

This works everywhere, including Windows, and it is the right route when the skill is about knowledge and standards rather than a sequence of clicks — a tone of voice, a report format, a checklist.

1. Open a new chat and say what you want. Something as plain as “I want to create a skill for [your task]” or “I need a skill that knows how to [your process]”. Attach anything that shows the standard — templates, past examples, brand guidelines, a spreadsheet.
2. Answer Claude’s questions properly. It will ask things like when you would use this and what makes the output good. Anthropic’s guidance is to “provide enough detail that someone capable but unfamiliar could follow your approach” — write for a competent new hire, not for yourself.
3. Claude builds it. It writes the SKILL.md, organises whatever you attached, generates any code the process needs, and packages the whole thing into a single skill file.
4. Turn it on and test it. Your skills live under Customize > Skills (also reachable as Settings > Capabilities > Skills). Toggle it on, then ask for a task it should cover. When Claude picks it up you will see “Using [skill name]” in its thinking.
5. Refine by asking. Tell Claude what was off and have it update the skill. You do not edit the file by hand unless you want to.

📝 Route 3 — Write the file yourself

Worth understanding even if you never do it, because it explains why the other two routes ask what they ask. A skill is just a folder with a markdown file in it.

my-skill.zip
└── my-skill/
    ├── SKILL.md          ← required
    └── resources/        ← optional: templates, reference docs, scripts

The SKILL.md opens with a short block of settings, then the instructions in plain markdown. Two settings are required:

Optionally you can add reference files, executable scripts (Python or Node, with pandas, numpy and matplotlib available), and a dependencies line naming packages a script needs. Then zip it, go to Customize > Skills, click + Create skill, choose Upload a skill, and upload the zip.

The description is the whole ballgame

Nine times out of ten, a skill that “does not work” is a skill that never got triggered. Claude decides whether to load your skill by reading its description, so a vague description means a skill that sits there unused. However you build it, this is the field to fuss over.

Getting your skill to the rest of the team

A skill you make is private to your own account by default. It does not appear for anyone else until it is deliberately shared, and there are three routes — only one of which is open to everyone today:

Things at MM that are worth recording

If you are looking for a first skill to record, these are real MM processes already identified as repetitive enough to be worth capturing — two of them are on the projects board waiting for someone to record them:

• Tagging a Canto shoot — tags, keywords and albums applied to MM conventions, so any teammate gets batch-consistent metadata instead of clicking through it by hand. On the board ↗
• Taking a raw video end to end — convert to the right formats and sizes, upload to Canto, catalog it with tags and albums. On the board ↗
• The weekly report you build by hand — whatever your version is. If you open the same tabs in the same order every Monday, that is a skill.
• How you answer a particular kind of customer — the structure, the tone, what you never say. Pair it with the Brand Guardian skill.
• Setting up a new wholesale account — the sequence, the checks, what gets recorded where.

← Back to all skills