The best explanation of Claude Skills I've found so far - (from Anthropic)

If you've been poking around with Claude's Skills and wondering how they actually work under the hood, Anthropic quietly released a 33-page guide that lays it all out.

It's not marketing fluff. It covers the structure, the design patterns, how Skills relate to MCP, and the mistakes that stop them from triggering properly. There's a decent section on testing too, which most guides skip entirely.

The bit I found most useful was the distinction between three patterns: document creation, workflow automation, and MCP enhancement. If you've connected tools via MCP but felt like something was missing, Skills are basically the knowledge layer that tells Claude how to use those tools well.

Worth a read even if you're not building custom Skills yet. It changed how I think about what's actually happening when Claude loads one.

Here's the PDF: https://resources.anthropic.com/hubfs/The-Complete-Guide-to-Building-Skill-for-Claude.pdf

DeepLearning AI also released a free short course on Skills built with Anthropic if you prefer learning that way: https://www.deeplearning.ai/short-courses/agent-skills-with-anthropic/ (2hrs 19mins)

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