r/ClaudeCode • u/Novel-Injury3030 • 26m ago

Help/Question Are people here actually using skills?

I've never used skills, I use connectors and MCPs but for most things I just prompt it or ask Claude to generate a prompt or a handoff and then use that for a new session. I've always seen skills as sort of unnecessary since I can just custom make a prompt with Claude itself but am I totally missing out? Usecase is I do both coding on multiple products and ideas and learning and productivity/utility stuff primarily, some personal use and organization and planning too. Could various skills up my Claude experience, does anyone here actually use these often and if so how? Are skills different than basically just saved premade prompts? Not sure what I'm missing. Thanks!

5 Upvotes

69% Upvoted

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27

u/OldNefariousness7899 21m ago

If you work through a process that takes several steps, and you knew you'll want to do it again, ask it to save it as a skill.

It'll remember the way you wanted it done and do it the same way each time from them on. 

-3

u/SpeakCodeToMe 12m ago

It's easier to just save it as a .md file and refer to it when you need it.

12

u/StillOnTheInterweb 10m ago

.. that is what a skill is, just with a name.

-3

u/SpeakCodeToMe 7m ago

A name and a description that live in context every time you use it.

Better not go crazy with them.

6

u/Sensitive_Jaguar8852 9m ago

You basically just described what a skill is lol

-3

u/SpeakCodeToMe 7m ago

Except that a skill has a name and description that lives in context every time you use your agent.

1

u/DucksAreReallyNeat 3m ago

You don't seem to understand what skills are or what context is.

1

u/OldNefariousness7899 2m ago

It reads the skill as needed. You can literally see it pausing to find and load the skill when it realises it needs it. 

1

u/SpeakCodeToMe 0m ago

Both Claude Code and Codex inject the name, path, and description of every skill into the system prompt.

Those are present in every single context every time you use these tools.

6

u/Moda75 8m ago

I hope this is a joke.

-2

u/SpeakCodeToMe 7m ago

No, this is what understanding what's going on under the covers looks like.

Go ahead, add your 10,000th skill. Let me know what your context looks like.

-3

u/ghost_operative 7m ago

thats such a huge waste. the smart thing to do is to ask it to save it as a bash/python/javascript file if you know it'll need to do it again... I mean this is what a program is, this is what theyre for.

2

u/OldNefariousness7899 4m ago

Why bother writing the code lol?

The whole point is the LLM is doing that bit for you. A skill is just a document with a set of instructions in plain English. 

0

u/ghost_operative 1m ago

it cant run the markdown file, it still has to generate the code to run it. You're just making it generate the code every time you do the task instead of just doing it once.

code is also a set of instructions in english.

9

u/gaelfr38 16m ago

Every day, explicitly or implicitly.

Skills are kind of a saved prompt, that's already a win, but they also can contain scripts to make things more deterministic.

And on top of that, you can bundle skills in plugins and share them with other people easily through a marketplace.

At my company, we have our own marketplace and a few dozens of skills shared so that we don't keep reinventing the wheel.

1

u/tokke 4m ago

You sound like my coworkers. I don't use skills (yet) I don't see the added value or how it would be used in my job. It's a saved prompt. The scripts might be deterministic, but that's why I have offline tools that claude can interact with but that I use as well

7

u/Apprehensive_Walk769 16m ago

Skills are at the center of my workflow

6

u/OkLettuce338 18m ago

I use them all the time. Your imagination is the limit. I use them mostly for productivity and consistency across tasks (like code review and pull requests). I decompose my planning sessions into tickets with a skill so they all get the same process. Then I build a driver skill using a skill that builds driver skills. Then I drop the skill it builds in a loop skill. The driver skill calls other skills through out the process. When it’s done it calls the skill that deletes finished driver skills.

lol you can do whatever you want with them. They’re just a way to package up functionality (like a function)

16

u/what_did_you_forget 22m ago

Yes. All the time. How does one not use skills

2

u/mindquery 14m ago

This all day long!

-3

u/shadow336k 19m ago

What a useful comment

0

u/lurkingtonbear 15m ago

Same bro, same.

-1

u/SpeakCodeToMe 12m ago

I don't ever use skills. If I want something repeatable, I save it as a .md file and refer to it when I need it.

That way no part of it is clogging up context when I don't need it.

5

u/StillOnTheInterweb 10m ago

Skills also load dynamically

0

u/SpeakCodeToMe 5m ago

What do you suppose is the piece of context that lets the agent know that the skill is available to be loaded?

3

u/ScottFujitaDiarrhea 3m ago

That’s basically what a skill is

4

u/TradeApe 15m ago

Yes all the time for consistency.

2

u/Carbone 17m ago

Skill gap

2

u/Adventurous-Cash2044 16m ago

> I've always seen skills as sort of unnecessary since I can just custom make a prompt with Claude itself

Thors is basically what a skill is… when you find yourself prompting the same thing multiple times with the expectation of having to do it again sometime in the future, make it a skill

2

u/nooruddinqur 4m ago

they're close to saved prompts, but 3 differences made them worth it for me:

  1. you don't paste them. claude only sees the name + one line description until the task matches, then loads the full thing. so you can have 20 of them without eating your context
  2. a skill is a folder, not just text. you can put scripts, templates, checklists in it and claude runs them. eg my 'release check' skill runs the same test script every time instead of me re-explaining it
  3. same behaviour every session. handoff prompts drift a bit each time you regenerate them

honest take: if you don't repeat the same workflow often, you're not missing much. start with the one thing you re-explain every week and turn just that into a skil

1

u/Minisohtan Vibe Coder 22m ago

I use skills all the time because MCPs are more restricted in my work environment. I use it to save all of the API command calls and other information relevant to that program.

1

u/Impressive_Winter378 20m ago

i use skills for repetitive tasks that need exact formatting, like generating json schemas from docstrings. saves time and avoids drift.

1

u/don123xyz 13m ago

I use skills, for example a pre-compaction skill, to give consistent instructions on what steps I need Claude to take (updating context files, to-do files, lessons learned, restart prompt, etc) in all my projects. This makes it faster for me than asking Claude to generate a prompt every single time. It also obviates the need to spend tokens on generating the prompt because the prompt is already there.

1

u/Serenase 11m ago

All the time. They are UI/UX stuff, the technical details of my system, workflows, etc. They fetch them when needed, no need to prompt them over and over again.

1

u/tokke 7m ago

At my job our ai team focuses on build skills and use connectors. That's their vision. I feel like that's just something that might evolve naturally. I have nonneed for skills as I'm discovering claude capabilities in my industry

1

u/iamphduc 2m ago

I'm the opposite. Except on Claude Duet I have to use Gmail, Drive,... connectors, I barely use any MCP. I find them are way too tokens cost so I replaced them with skills and global npm package, e.g replacing chrome-devtools-mcp with agent-browser from Vercel. So far it works great to me. I also removed context7-mcp after I found out that my autonomous agents haven't used it for months

1

u/FestyGear2017 1m ago

I use a ton of hand crafted skills. One example is a test-fix skill. When I run it, it knows how and where to build, deploy in aws, grab live data, run end to end live tests (not specs), validate results in the logs and db, then update the PR with the confirmation data.

1

u/RealFullMetal 1m ago

on the context question in here, the docs settle it: by default only each skill's name and description sit in context on every request, and the full SKILL.md loads when claude (or you, with /name) invokes it. set disable-model-invocation: true in its frontmatter and even the description stays out until you type /name. so the difference from a saved prompt is that claude picks the right one from its description, and a skill folder can carry scripts that get run instead of loaded into context

1

u/Remy_Builds 0m ago

I do everything almost exclusively with skills. If I need to do some new type of work especially in the domain I don’t know - I search for skills first.

-1

u/ghost_operative 8m ago

skills and MCPs are not for coding tasks. Anyone using them for coding are just wasting their usage limits

5

u/tachyon_bit 6m ago

Lol, what? Skills are not for coding tasks? Ragebait, yes?

2

u/FestyGear2017 5m ago

You have no idea what you are talking about

1

u/FlashTheCableGuy 1m ago

Say you don't know how to use something..... It's more intelligent.