Claude Skill
A reusable bundle of instructions, examples, and context that Claude loads on demand to perform a specific task.
A Claude Skill lives as a folder containing at minimum a SKILL.md file (markdown instructions) and optionally companion files: examples, scripts, JSON schemas, reference snippets. Claude Code and Claude Desktop discover skills automatically from ~/.claude/skills/ (global) or .claude/skills/ inside the current project.
Skills solve the 'I keep pasting the same prompt' problem. If you find yourself copy-pasting the same block of instructions into Claude every week, that's a skill candidate. Common patterns include code reviewers, accessibility auditors, security scanners, content reviewers, design system enforcers and workflow automators.
The key difference vs an MCP server: a skill is content (instructions, knowledge, examples) bundled with the project; an MCP server is code (executable tools) running as a separate process. Skills are markdown-first and need no programming. Anthropic ships some skills with Claude Code; the community has open-sourced 400+ more on GitHub.