$ man create-skill — Docs · Creators
How to create a Claude skill
A Claude skill is a small, shareable package that gives Claude a role, a toolset, and a set of guardrails for a specific job. Here's how to build one that people will actually install.
1. Name it for the job
Skills named after roles (“SEO Content Optimizer”) beat skills named after tools or models. Your user's mental model is “hire someone who does X.”
2. Structure the repo
your-skill/ ├── skill.md # Role + instructions the agent loads ├── claude-skill.yaml # Metadata: name, version, tags, install cli ├── README.md # Human-facing intro └── examples/ # Golden inputs + expected outputs
3. Write a tight README
Three headers. No more.
- What it does — one paragraph.
- Install — the single CLI command.
- How it works — 2–3 bullets on the behaviour it unlocks.
4. Add evals
A skill without measurements is a vibe. Include a small golden dataset (5–20 examples) and a rubric. We surface skills with evals more prominently.
5. Ship and submit
Open-source it (MIT or Apache-2.0), push to GitHub, then submit the repo URL via /submit. Our scraper also picks up repos tagged with claude-skill every six hours.