How to use Claude's skill-creator to draft and test a skill

Before you start

1. Check the plan: Anthropic's Help Center lists skills on Free, Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise; the Claude docs overview lists Pro and up. Sharing a skill with colleagues needs Team or Enterprise.
2. Turn on Code execution and file creation under Settings > Capabilities (on Team and Enterprise, an Owner does it for the organization).
3. Write the task in one sentence and what a good result looks like. That sentence becomes the skill's description.
4. Collect three real inputs to test with, including one awkward one.

A worked example

Illustration: a made-up business. Ama runs support at a 15-person company on Claude Team and corrects the same things in every refund reply. She turns skill-creator on and writes: "Use skill-creator to make a skill for refund replies: our policy, our tone, and a reply under 120 words that says what happens next." It asks her for the policy and two replies she liked, then drafts:

• Name: refund-reply, matching the folder.
• Description: "Writes a refund reply in our policy and tone. Use when a customer asks for a refund, a return or money back."
• Steps: check the order date against the 30-day policy; say yes, no or partial in the first line; one next step with a date; under 120 words. Plus her correction: "never promise a refund before finance approves anything over the limit".
• One example and four checks: the decision is in the first line; the date is right; the word count holds; no promise above the limit.

In Cowork she asks it to evaluate the skill on five refund emails. It runs them with and without the skill: without it, two replies promised refunds above the limit; with it, none did. She keeps the skill, then shares it with her team from Customize > Skills.

Package and check it

1. Keep the folder name the same as the name in SKILL.md.
2. Zip the folder itself, so the archive holds refund-reply/SKILL.md, not a loose SKILL.md.
3. Keep SKILL.md under 500 lines; move long reference material into files beside it.
4. Read the file it hands you. On claude.ai, skill-creator can package the skill as a .skill file, a ZIP of the folder, for you to download. Open it in the free .skill file viewer to read every file and check the name, description and folder before you upload it.
5. Upload it under Customize > Skills and turn it on.
6. Share or publish it on Team and Enterprise with the Share and Publish to org controls.

Next step: share it without a pile of copies

A skill in one account helps one person; shared copies drift. The cheapest way to share AI prompts with a small team compares the options, and skills in Claude Cowork covers where Cowork finds them.

Questions

What is Claude's skill-creator?

A skill from Anthropic that helps you write other skills. Ask Claude to use it, and it drafts a skill with you, then runs your skill on test prompts you agree on, shows the results and helps you revise it. On claude.ai you turn it on under Customize > Skills, where it's listed as from Anthropic.

Does skill-creator work the same in chat and Cowork?

No. Anthropic's docs say that in chat it works through the test prompts one at a time. In Cowork and Claude Code it also runs the same prompts without your skill as a baseline, runs everything in parallel, and adds pass rates, timing and token counts.

What do I need to use skills in Claude?

Anthropic's two pages differ on plans: the Help Center (updated this week) says skills are available on Free, Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise, while the Claude docs overview lists Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise. Either way, code execution must be on, under Settings > Capabilities; on Team and Enterprise, an Owner turns it on for the organization.