How to turn a founder's playbook into AI skills the team can use

Choose the first three

A worked example: the quote skill

Illustration: a made-up business. The founder of Tidewell Cleaning, a nine-person office-cleaning company, talks through how she quotes a new office while walking a colleague through last week's site visit. The SOP writer turns the transcript into a skill, in part:

---
name: office-cleaning-quote
description: Writes a quote for a new office cleaning contract from site visit notes. Use when someone asks for a quote, a price for a new office, or a proposal after a walk-through.
---
Purpose: a quote the client can sign, priced the way Tidewell prices.
Trigger: a site visit is done and its notes are in.
Roles: the person who did the visit; the founder approves.

1. List the rooms by type, with the floor area from the notes. If an area is missing, write [confirm area].
2. Take the hours for each room type from rates.md in this skill's folder.
3. If the client wants cleaning outside 7:00 to 19:00, use the evening rate in rates.md.
4. If the total is over the limit in rates.md, send it to the founder before the client.
5. Write the quote in the template in quote-template.md.

Checks: every room has an area; every price comes from rates.md.
Owner: operations lead. Review by: 1 May 2027.

The description is under 200 characters, the limit the Claude Help Center gives for skills uploaded to claude.ai (Claude Docs and the Agent Skills specification allow 1,024), and names the words people actually use ("a quote", "a price for a new office"), because that is what decides when the AI picks the skill. A colleague who has never quoted runs it on a real site visit without help; the one step she got stuck on, the evening rate, now says the hours.

Build and share them

1. Talk each method through with a colleague watching, and record it.
2. Turn the recording into steps with the SOP writer: one action per step, every "it depends" as an if/then.
3. Keep numbers in a file next to the skill, such as rates.md, so a price change is one edit.
4. Test it on someone who isn't you, on a real case, and fix where they got stuck.
5. Share it on Claude Team or Enterprise, or ChatGPT Business, Enterprise or Edu, and give each skill an owner and a review date.

Next step: the plan for the team

Shared skills need a plan that shares them. ChatGPT plans for a small business covers which one fits, and making your first Claude skill covers uploading one.

Questions

How do I turn my playbook into AI skills?

Make each repeated method one skill: a description of when to use it, the steps written so someone new can follow them, the shape of the output and one real example. Start with the three methods someone else already does every week, test each on a real case by someone who isn't you, and share them where the team's AI reads them.

Which parts of a founder's playbook should become skills first?

The methods other people already do weekly and ask you about: quoting, onboarding a customer, handling a complaint. Leave out decisions that stay with you, such as pricing exceptions or hiring calls, and anything that changes every time.

Where do the team's skills live?

On Claude Team and Enterprise you share a skill with colleagues or the whole organization; on ChatGPT Business, Enterprise and Edu, with people, groups or the workspace. A skill written in the open SKILL.md format can be used in both.