Okay here's the thing we need to talk about:

Creating monthly expense reports are a 2-3 hour nightmare.
Every single month.

You're hunting down receipts from Uber, Amazon, that one coffee shop that only does message receipts.

Exporting bank statements.
Categorizing everything.
Fighting with your company's god-awful template in Excel.

And your options?

Either waste those 3 hours, pay $19/month for some half-broken expense app, or drop $200 on a freelancer who'll take a week to respond.

Claude Skills changes this to 5 minutes.

I tested it last week.

DIDN'T OPEN EXCEL ONCE.

What are Claude Skills?

Instruction manuals that teach Claude to be an expert at specific tasks. You're basically giving Claude a crash course in exactly how to do what you need.

Think of it like handing someone a playbook instead of making them figure it out from scratch.

But first, here’s what happened this week:

1. Manus 1.5: Build full‑stack AI apps

A general‑purpose AI agent that builds and runs end‑to‑end projects for you. Think full‑stack web apps with auth, databases, embedded AI, custom domains, and built‑in analytics, directly through a chat. It also handles research, data analysis, slides, and more, with a big context window and faster execution to keep multi‑step workflows coherent

2. Director 2.0: Automate web tasks with a single prompt.

A prompt‑to‑automation app: describe a web task, and it generates a Stagehand script that runs on Browserbase to reliably control the browser. It’s built for non‑developers and developers alike: preview actions, iterate quickly, and ship repeatable workflows without writing boilerplate automation code

3. Faith: 100% free AI Bible app

An AI Bible companion on iOS that lets you chat about Scripture across multiple translations, get answers to common topics, and study on the go. It’s positioned as a free, ad‑free experience, offering a simple interface for devotional reading and AI‑guided exploration of verses and themes.

Let me break down what's actually happening here:

Skills are structured instructions that tell Claude exactly how to use tools the right way.

Think about it: You can tell a junior employee "make a presentation" and they'll eventually figure it out after three rounds of feedback and a lot of wasted time.

Or you give them templates, brand guidelines, and examples of what good looks like and they nail it the first time.

That's Skills. Claude isn't guessing anymore. It has expert documentation that says "here's exactly how to build a PDF, format an Excel sheet, or structure a PowerPoint the professional way, not the 'I hope this works' way."

Less trial and error. Actual consistency. Way faster execution.

Let me show you what this looks like in practice:

You: "Claude, analyze this spreadsheet and create a PDF report."

Claude: "I can help you understand the data and suggest what to include in your report..."

Then YOU have to:

Total time: 1-3 hours (or you procrastinate for a week)

Skills are specialized instruction files that live in the Claude system. When you're using Claude through the desktop app or API, you can:

When you activate a Skill, Claude reads the instructions and applies them to your task. It's like hiring a specialist who already knows exactly how your tools work.

Here's a real example I built yesterday:

The Task: Generate weekly content reports from my newsletter analytics (opens, clicks, top links) and format them into a branded PDF.

Before Skills:

With Claude Skills:

The 20-minute upfront investment pays for itself after the second use.

The PDF it generated matched our brand style without me specifying any of it beyond "use our brand style."

I've been doing this report manually for 6 months.

The first time I saw Claude do it in under 3 minutes, I just sat there thinking "why the hell was I doing this myself?"

This is the part most people will get lazy about, even I did at first. Don't be like me.

Anthropic built something called the Skill Creator (skill.md) - basically a meta-skill that helps you write instruction manuals for Claude.

You can:

And someone built a Skill generator that walks you through creating custom Skills without writing a single line of code.

My take: This is Black Mirror disguised as productivity tech. In a good way. You're literally teaching AI to automate your grunt work while everyone else is stuck in the same "let's circle back on this" meeting for the third week in a row.

Prerequisite:

Subscription: Skills are available to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise users of Claude apps.

You can start a new claude chat directly, Anthropic provides a tool to guide you through skill creation without manual file editing.

Step 1: Enable Skills in Settings

Step 2: Access the Skill Creator

Step 3: Define the Workflow

You can then reference these custom skills in your chats, and Claude will automatically invoke the relevant skill based on your task, no manual selection is needed.

Step 4: Test Your Skill Before Relying on It

The first version won't be perfect. Run it with:

When something breaks or looks wrong, describe the issue to Claude in the same chat. It'll update the skill instructions automatically.

I had to do 3 rounds of "actually, can you adjust the header spacing" before my newsletter report skill was dialed in. That's normal.

Step 5: Name It Like You'll Actually Remember It

Use clear, descriptive names:

Don't use:

Future you (and your coworkers if you share skills) will appreciate the clarity when you have 10+ custom skills in your library.

1. Make Skills focused and specific

2. Include clear examples in your Skill instructions

Vague instructions = inconsistent results. Be specific about what you want.

Bad example: "Format the report to look professional"

Good example: "Use Helvetica 12pt for body text, 18pt bold for section headers, 1.5 line spacing. Include our logo (logo.png) in the top right corner at 150px width. Use #003366 for headers and #666666 for body text."

The second version gives Claude zero room for interpretation. That's what you want.

When I was building my newsletter analytics skill, I included a screenshot of my ideal report layout in the instructions. Now every report looks identical, which is exactly the point.

3. Test your Skills with edge cases

4. Version control your Skills

5. Start simple, then expand

"Skill issue" just got a new meaning, and you can now actually use it at work.

For the last 2 years, AI productivity has had a massive gap:

You read about AI automating everything, but when YOU try it:

Claude Skills closes that gap.

This won't dominate headlines like "AGI achieved" or "Haiku 4.5 beats GPT-5."

But it's a shift from: "AI could help me if I spent 10 hours learning how to make it work"

to: "AI just did my work in 10 minutes, and I have no idea how the tech works"

That's the point.

The best technology disappears. You shouldn't need a CS degree to generate a report or know Figma to make a presentation.

You just need the result.

And here's the crazier part: Skills aren't just personal productivity hacks. They're the foundation for agent-based automation.

When AI agents go mainstream (and they will), they'll need Skills to interact with YOUR specific tools, APIs, and processes. The companies building Skills libraries right now? They're building the operating system for AI agents.

Most of the world hasn't caught on yet. You just did.

Now the question is: what are you going to build with it? What's the first workflow you're going to automate with Claude Skills?

Hit reply and tell me. I'm genuinely curious if people use this for work tasks, personal projects, or something completely unexpected.

Until next time,
Vaibhav 🤝

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