Claude Skills Tutorial: Create, Run, and Share Skills Across Chat, Cowork, and Code

Key Takeaways

• Skills are markdown files — a prompt with optional code — saved once and invoked with /skill-name in any Claude environment.
• The skill creator tool uses a meta approach: Claude builds the skill for you by asking clarifying questions about your use case before drafting the prompt.
• Skills only load into context when triggered — they're not always-on, which means you can have many skills without cluttering every conversation.
• Skills created on claude.ai automatically sync to the Claude desktop app — Chat, Cowork, and Claude for Word/Excel/PowerPoint all share the same skill library.
• Claude Code handles skills differently: global skills apply across all instances on your machine; project-level skills live in the project folder. You can export skills from the web UI and import them to Claude Code via the download-as-zip workflow.

Building Your First Skill

From claude.ai or the desktop app, go to the sidebar and click Customize, then Skills. Click the plus button and select "Create skill" → "Create with Claude." The skill creator will ask what you want the skill to do — Stratvert's example is a thread-reply skill that summarizes an email or Slack thread, extracts action items, and drafts a reply in your tone. After your initial description, add "What else should I clarify?" to force the skill creator to ask follow-up questions rather than make assumptions.

After drafting, test against real examples from your own work — this is where the real quality improvement happens. Feed in an actual email thread and give specific feedback on the output: wrong tone, unwanted sign-off phrases, missing context. The skill gets refined iteratively before you save it.

Skills in Claude Code

Claude Code's skill system is separate from the web UI. Skills in Claude Code are global (available to every Claude Code instance on your machine) or project-level (living inside the project folder). To bring a web-built skill into Claude Code: in the Skills view, click the three dots next to the skill, choose Download, rename the file to .zip, extract it, and place the skill markdown file in the appropriate Claude Code skills folder. Skills in Claude Code are invoked with /skill-name from the terminal or VS Code extension — the same syntax as the web.

Commands & Code Mentioned

/thread-reply [paste email or slack thread]
/skill-name

Related on OpenClawDatabase

• OpenClaw Skills Guide — building and managing skills in Claude Code
• Claude Cowork Skills Guide — skills in the Cowork environment
• Skills Database — community skill examples and templates