Agent skills
Agent skills: teaching agents your expertise
Agent skills are packaged capabilities that let an AI agent perform real work. A skill carries your procedures, knowledge, and best practices, so Claude can complete a task the way you would want it done, consistently.
What they are
What are agent skills?
An agent skill is a bundle of expertise an agent can load when a task calls for it. Where a tool is a single action the agent can take, a skill is the know-how that decides when and how to use those tools for a particular kind of work.
Packaged expertise
A skill captures the steps, context, and standards for a task, so the agent does not have to be re-taught each time.
Loaded on demand
The agent brings a skill in when the work requires it and follows what it contains, rather than improvising the procedure.
Consistent results
Because the procedure lives in the skill, the same task is handled the same way whoever runs it and however often.
How Claude uses them
How Claude uses agent skills
Skills are one of the built-in capabilities on the Claude Platform. When Claude takes on a task, it plans the work, selects the skill that fits, and follows the instructions and knowledge inside it. The skill supplies the procedure; the platform's tools carry out the steps.
Those tools sit alongside skills and work with them. Claude can run code, search and fetch from the web, and connect to external systems through the Model Context Protocol connector, reaching remote MCP servers without extra client code. A skill decides which of these to reach for and in what order.
Skills are part of how Claude works as an agent: strong instruction following, sensible tool selection, and the ability to correct course across a multi-step task. If you want the wider picture of how agents plan and act, the AI agents hub sets out the fundamentals, and context engineering covers how to give an agent the right information to work from.
Getting started
Getting started with agent skills
You do not start by writing a large system. You start by describing one piece of work you want done well, then let Claude follow it.
Describe the work
Write down the procedure, context, and standards for a task you repeat, in plain language. That description is the skill.
Test in the Console
Try the skill in the Claude Console, see how Claude carries out the task, and refine the instructions until the result is right.
Build and deploy
Integrate skills through the Claude Platform, where they sit alongside tools such as code execution and the MCP connector, then put them to work.
Build with Claude
Start building with agent skills
Teach Claude your expertise, procedures, and best practices, and give it the tools to act on them. The Claude Platform documentation is the place to begin.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
What are agent skills?
Agent skills are packaged capabilities that teach an AI agent how to do a specific kind of work. A skill bundles your procedures, expertise, and best practices so the agent can carry out tasks consistently, the way you would want them done.
How does Claude use agent skills?
Claude loads a skill when a task calls for it and follows the instructions and knowledge it contains. Skills are available on the Claude Platform alongside tools such as the MCP connector, code execution, and web search, so Claude can plan a task and use the right skill to complete it.
How are agent skills different from tools?
A tool is a single action an agent can call, such as running code or searching the web. A skill is the know-how that tells the agent when and how to use those tools for a particular job. Skills and tools work together: the skill supplies the procedure, the tools carry out the steps.
Do I need to write code to build an agent skill?
You build skills by describing the expertise, procedures, and best practices you want Claude to follow. Developers integrate skills through the Claude Platform, where they sit alongside the other built-in tools for building agents.
Where can I get started with agent skills?
Start with the Claude Platform documentation, which covers Skills and the other tools for building agents. From there you can build a first skill, test it in the Claude Console, and iterate before deploying.