Anthropic introduced Agent Skills for Claude, enabling the AI assistant to load specialised folders containing instructions, scripts, and resources when performing specific tasks like Excel manipulation or brand guideline compliance.
Skills represent a new capability allowing Claude to access task-specific expertise only when relevant, improving performance on specialised workflows while maintaining operational speed. The feature works across Claude apps for Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise users, Claude Code, and the Claude Developer Platform API. Skills are composable, allowing multiple skills to stack together, portable across all Claude products using the same format, and efficient by loading only necessary components on demand.
According to Anthropic, "Think of Skills as custom onboarding materials that let you package expertise, making Claude a specialist on what matters most to you." The company emphasises that skills can include executable code for tasks where traditional programming proves more reliable than token generation.
Users can access Anthropic-created skills for document creation including professional Excel spreadsheets with formulas, PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and fillable PDFs. The "skill-creator" skill provides interactive guidance for custom skill development, with Claude asking about workflows, generating folder structures, formatting SKILL.md files, and bundling required resources without manual file editing.
For developers, Agent Skills integrate with the Messages API through the new /v1/skills endpoint, providing programmatic control over custom skill versioning and management. The feature requires the Code Execution Tool beta to provide a secure execution environment. Claude Code users can install skills via plugins from the anthropics/skills marketplace or manually add them to ~/.claude/skills directory.
Team and Enterprise administrators must enable Skills organisation-wide before individual users can access the feature. Claude automatically invokes relevant skills based on task context, displaying skill usage in its chain of thought during processing.
Organisations gain the ability to package and distribute team-specific expertise across their Claude deployments, standardising workflows and brand compliance. The cross-platform compatibility ensures consistent performance whether teams use Claude apps, API integrations, or Claude Code. Enterprise administrators maintain control over skill deployment while teams can share custom skills through version control systems.
Skills transform Claude from a general-purpose AI into a customisable specialist aligned with organisational needs. The composable architecture allows enterprises to build complex automation workflows by combining multiple skills. The security consideration requiring trusted skill sources indicates enterprise-grade attention to data protection while enabling powerful code execution capabilities for automation tasks.