What Are Skills?

Module: Skills | Lesson: 1 of 3 | Time: ~10 minutes

What You Will Learn

• What Skills are in Claude Code
• What built-in skills are available
• When and how skills activate

Prerequisites

• Completed Module 06: Git Integration

What Is a Skill?

A skill in Claude Code is a Markdown file that contains instructions for Claude. Think of skills as cheat sheets or playbooks that teach Claude how to handle specific tasks or follow specific patterns.

Without skills, Claude relies on its general training to help you. That is often enough. But sometimes you want Claude to follow a very specific process — your team's coding conventions, a particular deployment workflow, or a set of rules about how to structure files. Skills let you write those instructions down so Claude follows them consistently.

Think of Skills as Recipe Cards

Imagine you are baking. You could wing it from memory, but a recipe card ensures you get the right result every time. Skills are recipe cards for Claude — written instructions it reads and follows when the situation calls for it.

Two Kinds of Skills

Skills generally fall into two categories:

Type	Purpose	Example
Reference Skills	Provide knowledge and context	"Our project uses tabs, not spaces"
Action Skills	Define step-by-step workflows	"To deploy: run tests, build, push to staging"

Reference skills give Claude background information. They do not tell Claude to do something — they tell Claude what to know. For example, a reference skill might describe your project's file structure or naming conventions.

Action skills are more like recipes. They tell Claude how to do something specific, step by step. A deployment skill might list every command to run in order.

Where Skills Live

Skills are stored as Markdown files (.md) inside a special folder in your project:

your-project/
  .claude/
    skills/
      coding-standards.md
      deploy-to-staging.md
      review-checklist.md

The .claude/skills/ directory is where Claude looks for skill files. When you start Claude Code in a project that has this folder, Claude automatically discovers the skills inside it.

note

The .claude/ folder may already exist in your project if you have used Claude Code settings before. If the skills/ subfolder does not exist yet, you will create it when you make your first custom skill (covered in Lesson 3).

How Claude Discovers Skills

Claude Code finds skills through auto-discovery. When Claude starts a session in your project, it scans the .claude/skills/ directory and reads any Markdown files it finds there. Claude then keeps that knowledge available throughout your conversation.

You do not need to manually load or activate most skills. If the skill file is in the right folder, Claude knows about it.

Some skills also come built in to Claude Code itself. These are not files in your project — they are skills that ship with the tool. We will explore those in the next lesson.

Why Skills Matter

Here is what makes skills powerful:

• Consistency — Claude follows the same process every time, even across different team members
• Efficiency — You write the instructions once instead of repeating them in every conversation
• Shareability — Skills live in your project repo, so the whole team benefits when you commit them
• Customization — You tailor Claude's behavior to your exact workflow

Try It Yourself

Let us check if your project already has any skills:

1. Open your terminal and navigate to any project folder
2. Run this command to check for a skills directory:

dir .claude\skills

For WSL Users

If you are working inside WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), use the Linux-style path instead:

ls .claude/skills/

3. If the folder does not exist, that is perfectly normal — it means no custom skills have been created yet. You will create your first one in Lesson 3.
4. If the folder does exist, look at the filenames. Each .md file is a skill that Claude will auto-discover.

What You Learned

• Skills are Markdown files that give Claude instructions, like cheat sheets or playbooks
• Reference skills provide knowledge (what to know), while action skills define workflows (what to do)
• Skills live in the .claude/skills/ directory inside your project
• Claude auto-discovers skills when it starts a session — no manual loading required
• Skills bring consistency, efficiency, and shareability to your Claude Code workflows

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Next Up

Next: Using Built-In Skills