Agent Skills is a new way for Claude to learn new tricks. Imagine you could hand Claude a folder full of instructions, code, and resources, and Claude would know exactly when to use them. That’s what Agent Skills does: it lets you teach Claude how to handle specific jobs, and Claude picks up the right tools for the task, just when you need them.
So what’s new? Anthropic has rolled out Agent Skills through the Messages API, and there’s now a special /v1/skills endpoint that lets you manage and update your skills as you go. To create a skill, you just write a SKILL.md file. At the top, you fill in the basics—what the skill is called, and what it does. Simple as that.
---
name: example-skill-name
description: Brief description of what this skill does
---
[Instructions and references to bundled files or scripts]
When Claude starts up, it takes a quick look at all the skills you’ve given it—just the names and what they do. But when a job comes along that needs a special skill, Claude grabs the full instructions and gets to work. If there are extra files or scripts in the folder, Claude only opens them if and when they’re needed. It’s a bit like having a toolbox and only pulling out the right tool for the job.
Some skills even let Claude run code, like a handy assistant who knows when to use a calculator instead of guessing. While language models are great at lots of things, sometimes you just need the certainty of real code. Anthropic has already built some skills for working with Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and PDFs, but you can also make your own for whatever job you have in mind. You can keep track of different versions in the Claude Console. Just note, you’ll need the Code Execution Tool beta to use these features.
Why does this matter? In the past, if you wanted an agent to do something special, you had to build a whole new one from scratch. Now, you can just give Claude a skill for the job—like teaching someone a new recipe instead of opening a new restaurant every time you want a different meal. You can share your know-how, whether it’s formatting reports, handling tricky data, or following the rules. And because skills work everywhere Claude does, your team can use them wherever they need, and keep them up to date as things change.
