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The 9 types of skills that work, tips for writing great ones, and how to distribute them across your team. By Thariq, Anthropic.
After hundreds of skills in production, these 9 categories cover the vast majority of high-value use cases.
How to correctly use a library, CLI, or SDK. Include reference code snippets and gotchas.
How to test/verify code works. Often paired with Playwright, tmux. Worth having an engineer spend a week making these excellent.
Connect to data and monitoring stacks. Include credentials, dashboard IDs, common workflows.
Automate repetitive workflows into one command. Save previous results in log files.
Generate framework boilerplate. Combine with composable scripts.
Enforce code quality. Run as hooks or GitHub Actions.
Fetch, push, deploy. May reference other skills.
Take a symptom, walk through investigation, produce structured report.
Routine maintenance with guardrails for destructive actions.
Patterns that separate mediocre skills from ones that actually change how Claude works.
Focus on info that pushes Claude out of its normal thinking. The frontend-design skill avoided Inter font and purple gradients.
The highest-signal content. Build up from common failure points. Update over time.
A skill is a folder, not just a markdown file. Use references/, scripts/, examples/, assets/. Progressive disclosure.
Give Claude flexibility to adapt. Don't be too specific.
Store setup info in config.json. Use AskUserQuestion for structured setup.
The description is what Claude scans to decide "is there a skill for this?" Write it as a trigger condition.
Skills can store data in append-only logs, JSON, or SQLite. Use ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA} for stable storage.
Give Claude helper functions to compose rather than reconstruct.
Skills can include hooks activated only when called. Example: /careful blocks destructive commands.
Getting skills from one developer to the entire team.
Put skills in .claude/skills/ for small teams. Everyone on the repo gets them automatically.
For larger teams, publish skills as plugins. Discoverable, versioned, and updatable.
Sandbox first, then traction, then marketplace PR. Let the best skills rise naturally.
Use a PreToolUse hook for usage logging. Track which skills get triggered and how often.
The AI Brain Pro ships with 138 skills across all 9 categories — library references, verification flows, scaffolding templates, runbooks, and more. Install once, use forever.
Get AI Brain Pro — $97Based on lessons from Thariq at Anthropic