In my last video on Claude I talked about Opus 4.6 and said very clearly: We need systems, not random results. And that is exactly where the so-called skills help us. Today I will show you how to build a digital expert team with them: a specialist for your product development — the strategy — and two professional copywriters for social media and newsletters. Step by step: how to set up skills, why the Skill Creator is your most important tool, and at the end you can download my personal templates directly. With them you build your business not just faster, but smarter.
What Claude Skills are — and why they can do more than GPTs
Each skill is essentially its own subject expert for a specific area. You define once how this expert should work — and after that, Claude draws on it independently in the completely normal chat.
That is the big difference to GPTs or Gems: you always have to select those proactively. You press a plus somewhere or work in a special interface with exactly that one assistant. With Claude you simply say in the middle of the chat: “Please create this and that for me” or “Draw on such-and-such skill” — and Claude does it.
And one more lovely thing: skills have a specific format (MD files) and can be downloaded. So if you also work with a tool like Manus, you can import your skills there and keep using them in another AI. Your work is not chained to one tool.
Setup: where to find and activate the skills
I am working here in Claude’s normal browser interface. In the past you had to go to your initials at the bottom and click through the settings. But the team at Anthropic listens closely to its customers and knows: they are not necessarily techies, they need it simpler. So there is now a new icon in the left bar — it looks a bit like a toolbox.
- Click the toolbox icon in the left bar. There you will find Skills and connectors. (Connectors are additional programs you can connect to Claude — for me, for example, Canva, GitHub, Google Drive, Make, Notion and Zapier.)
- Click Skills. You see two areas: My skills — if there is nothing there yet, that is completely fine, that is what we are working on today — and the Examples.
- From the examples, definitely activate the Skill Creator. You will see why in a moment.
Incidentally, you will find countless more skills on the internet that you can load in here — and further down my gift is waiting: my three personal highlights, which I work with every single day.
The Skill Creator: your most important tool
The Skill Creator is essentially your skill generator: it tells Claude what a skill should look like. And the best part — you can achieve great results with very rudimentary voice input. An example: I go into a new chat and write:
“Hey Claude, please create a skill for me that helps me analyse my CSV files.”
Claude starts working immediately. And not just anyhow: first Claude looks at which skills already exist and what the workflow could look like — fed by the Skill Creator. Then you get questions: do you want statistics and an overview? Check data quality? Create visualisations? Specific analyses? You read, you answer — done. I had a CSV analyser built this way that creates HTML reports with charts. Imagine what you can do with that: in future you do not deliver a presentation, you bring such an HTML document along and simply show it on the computer.
At the end, Claude asks whether the skill is okay like this — and you can copy it to your own skills or download it. It then appears in the toolbox under “My skills”, and via the three dots you can rework it at any time if it is not yet properly good in everyday use.
Your results naturally get even better when you tell Claude more precisely what the skill should do and with what result — and when you upload example files along with it. But even with very simple input you very quickly create very specific skills for your business.
The trick with the three wishes
Remember the children’s game: a good fairy stands before you and you have three wishes? There were always the children who wished for three concrete things — and the smart alecks who said: “Dear fairy, I wish for infinitely many wishes.” We can do exactly that with Claude too:
“Please create a skill for me that helps me create the optimal skills for my business.”
Claude draws on the knowledge it has already gathered about me, asks a few follow-up questions — and what came out for me was a Skill Designer. Claude’s Skill Creator only guides you through the technical jungle; this, by contrast, is concretely about me and my business. And I will say it openly: I am not a techie. I read through what Claude wants from me as an answer, and I answer. And I can revise at any time: “Hey Claude, please do that differently.” Basically, the only limits are your own ideas.
Skill 1: product strategy — business planning instead of just text
Skills can do far more than texts. My product designer skill helps me develop new products for my clients so they feel even better looked after in my topic. My request in the chat:
“Hey Claude, I am currently considering whether I should create a low-priced product under €100 for my target group of solopreneurs in online business. Please have a look at what you know about me and which products genuinely make sense there.”
The good part: Claude and I have been working together for a good two years, so Claude knows quite a bit about me. If you are working with such a skill for the first time, you can upload your own documents — PDFs, your website, everything Claude needs to develop better products for you.
What came out for me: a NotebookLM prompt kit, a quick-start toolkit for solopreneurs, a quick-check mini audit as a self-study product. And the funny thing is: the NotebookLM prompt kit actually already exists in my shop — as an upsell for my NotebookLM webinar. So Claude was thinking in exactly the right direction.
Skill 2: social media copywriter
In the same way I built myself a copywriter for social media. The request in the chat:
“Hey Claude, please write me a LinkedIn post — it should be about NotebookLM for solopreneurs.”
Claude automatically draws on the skill I created earlier and very quickly delivers a finished post. I would then still adapt it — but I am not starting with a blank sheet of paper. And the more I work with the skill and the more I train Claude’s memory, the better the output gets.
Skill 3: newsletter specialist
The third employee writes newsletters for your customers — so you can sell directly out of your email marketing. Again, I deliberately created it vaguely:
“Hey Claude, please create a skill for me that helps me write better newsletters — one that works for me as a copywriter in email marketing.”
A few minutes later the skill was done. And then it starts right in the chat:
“Hey Claude, please write me a newsletter promoting my AI power days, which I will be running for the first time from 19 to 21 March 2026.”
And when everything is set up correctly, you see in the chat: Reading Newsletter Skill — Claude accesses the skill directly. It makes sure the newsletter converts and things are brought to the point. You now have a newsletter copywriter you can deploy at any time.
How to get better skills: give Claude material
In the three examples I was deliberately vague — to show you that it already works with rudimentary voice input. But your results get considerably better when you do two things.
First: say more precisely what should come out at the end. So not just “a skill for newsletters”, but: the skill should do this and that — with such and such a result. The more concrete the goal, the more precise the skill.
Second: upload material. Example files, PDFs, your website, existing analyses, old newsletters, whatever you happen to have on your computer. Everything Claude needs to understand how you work and how your customers tick. In my case, Claude and I have been working together for a good two years — so Claude already knows a lot about my business. When you work with a skill for the first time, you replace that head start with exactly these kinds of documents.
When a skill is not good enough yet
A skill is not something you build once and never touch again. If you notice while working that the results are not landing yet, you go to the three dots next to the skill in the toolbox — there you can edit and sharpen it. And in the chat itself you can of course say at any time: “Please do that differently.” That is precisely the difference to a one-off prompt: a skill gets better with every round; a prompt stays what it was.
Reality check: what this feels like day to day
The principle is always the same: create the skill once, then simply work in the completely normal chat — Claude pulls in the right expert itself. Two things I will give you for everyday use:
- Never blindly adopt what the AI throws out. You should always adapt — but you are not starting from zero.
- Speaking instead of typing: I think out loud and use Wispr Flow (affiliate link) — I just press one key and speak my prompts. Wispr Flow also saves the prompts so I can look up afterwards what I formulated. And I use it to dictate my social media comments too — otherwise I would never manage it all.
Your gift: my three skill templates to download
Don’t want to start from zero? My three personal skill configurations — product strategy, social media copywriter and newsletter specialist, exactly the ones from the video — are yours as free templates:
Frequently asked questions
What sets Claude Skills apart from GPTs or Gems?
GPTs or Gems always have to be selected proactively — via a plus or in a separate interface. A Claude skill kicks in directly in the normal chat: you simply write your request, and Claude pulls in the matching skill itself. For non-techies in particular, that is a much simpler way of working.
Can I use Claude Skills in other AI tools too?
Yes. Skills are MD files and can be downloaded. If you work with a tool like Manus, for example, which can read skills, you simply import them there again.
Can I edit a Claude skill afterwards?
Yes. In the toolbox you go to the three dots next to the skill — there you can edit it. And that is exactly what you should do: if you notice while working that the results are not landing yet, you sharpen the skill instead of prompting anew each time. Additionally, you can tell Claude in the chat at any time to do something differently.
Do I need technical knowledge to create Claude Skills?
No. The Skill Creator guides you through the technical jungle: it asks questions, you answer in plain language. And you can readjust at any time — “Please do that differently” is enough.
Conclusion: train the right tools — don’t just own them
Our world as solopreneurs keeps getting bigger on the one hand; we get more and more possibilities. All the more important that we use the right tools for ourselves and train them to get the optimum for our business. With three skills — product strategy, social media, newsletter — you have a real foundation for that: a digital expert team that does not live in some extra interface but works along directly in your chat.
If you would rather not build such workflows alone: in my free Skool community we exchange ideas about exactly this. And if you want to bring AI systematically into your whole business, have a look at the AI Business Community.
