A Claude Skill is a pre-configured setup that holds your voice, audience, values, and process, so you stop re-explaining yourself to AI every time you open a new chat. The five Skills I built and use daily are the Voice Skill, the Repurpose Skill, the Email Skill, the Audience Skill, and the Values Skill. Together, they help me save 10 hours a week in my business. The setup instructions and architect-level prompts are below.
The other day I was at my piano, working through a piece I’ve been learning, and Claude was running on my laptop right next to me on the bench. Drew walked through and laughed. Of course you’d be playing piano while the robots do your work.
The juxtaposition is the whole point. My hands were doing one thing and the machine was doing another. And what I got back was more of me. More piano on a Tuesday afternoon. More mornings in the garden before school drop-off. More space to think about my work instead of just executing on it.
That’s what I want AI to do. I want the robots to do the robot work, so I can go back to the piano.
I’ve spent the last several months condensing my work week from four days down to two. Last week I worked Monday and Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, I was in the greenhouse pressing tomato seeds into soil with my girls before the dew burned off. The specific tool inside Claude that’s making this possible is something called Skills, and I’m going to walk you through the five I built and how to set them up for yourself.
But first, the conversation we have to have.
The Honest Part Most AI Posts Skip
AI uses a lot of energy. Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and water. Models were trained on writing that wasn’t always opted into. There are real questions about what AI does to creative work, to labor, to the planet that holds all of us.
I don’t have clean answers, and I’m wary of anyone who tells you they do.
What I have is a working philosophy. Use AI for the work that drains you, not for the work that defines you. Use it intentionally, never ambiently. Open it for a specific task, finish, and close it. The most ethical use I’ve found is the one where AI gives me back time I can spend with my hands in the dirt or my arms around my kids.
The harder question I won’t dodge is whether I’m making it worse by using AI and teaching others to use it. Maybe. The tool exists, you’re going to encounter it with or without my voice in the conversation, and I’d rather be one of the people teaching how to use it well than pretend I’m above it.
The question isn’t whether you use AI. It’s whether what you do with the time it gives you back actually matters. If you’re just getting started with AI tools, my 10 ChatGPT prompts are a good place to begin before you build your first Skill.
What Are Claude Skills vs. Projects vs. Cowork?
Most people get confused by the difference between Skills, Projects, and Cowork inside Claude. So, think of this like you’re in the kitchen.
- A Project is the meal you’re cooking right now. Recipe open. Ingredients on the counter. Timer running. When the meal is done, you wipe the counter and start over the next time you cook.
- A Skill is the way you cook. The instinct in your hands. How you know how much salt without measuring. How you taste a sauce and know what’s missing. You bring it into every meal you make. The recipe changes. The way you cook doesn’t.
- Cowork is the friend in the kitchen with you. A real-time helper for whatever’s on the cutting board today. She’s not your way of cooking. She’s the company you have while you cook today’s meal.
Most people open Claude every morning and start a brand new Project, re-explaining everything from scratch. That’s like cooking dinner with someone who’s never been in your kitchen before. You wouldn’t do that with a real person. Don’t do it with AI either.
Skills are how you stop.
Why Most Claude AI Skills Don’t Work (And How to Fix Yours)
You can’t shortcut your way into a good Skill.
Most people’s first Skill is mediocre because they tried to build it before they had the underlying process. They wanted Claude to write in their voice before they’d ever defined their voice. They wanted Claude to draft emails before they’d figured out what their emails should feel like. The Skill was supposed to do the thinking for them. Skills don’t work that way.
A Skill captures what you already know. It doesn’t invent it.
If your first Skill comes back mediocre, that’s the Skill showing you where the work is. The good news is you develop the process by using the Skill. Build the rough version. Use it daily. Notice where it fails. Add the missing piece. Use it again. After a few weeks, you have both a real Skill and a deeper understanding of your own work, because the two grow together.
Take the pressure off the setup. Your first Skill doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to exist. That’s how all five of mine got built.
The Voice Skill, How to Make AI Write in Your Exact Tone
This is the first Skill to build, and there’s a reason it goes first. Your voice is the thread that runs through everything else. If Claude doesn’t know how you sound, none of the other Skills will sound like you either. The Voice Skill is the foundation. Every Skill you build after this one will lean on it, the way every meal you cook leans on knowing how much salt is right in your hands. I learned this the hard way.
The first time I asked Claude to write something for me, I gave it three sentences of context and got back a piece of writing that sounded vaguely like a wellness coach who’d never met me. Polished, useless, and not mine. The problem wasn’t Claude. The problem was that I’d never actually trained Claude on who I am and how I write.
Here’s what goes inside the Voice Skill. Five to ten of your strongest pieces of writing, pulled from a few different formats. We’re talking about a couple of captions, some emails, a few long-form pieces of content that hold the texture of how you really write.
Add a short list of words and phrases you’d never say in real life, the corporate ones, the cliché ones, the ones that always sound like someone else. Then add the words you reach for when you’re being yourself. Do you typically write in long sentences or short? Do you swear sometimes? Does your humor stay in or get edited out?
Here are three prompts that put this Skill to work.
- “Read this draft against the voice samples in this Skill. Flag every sentence that breaks my voice pattern. For each one, name what’s specifically off, whether it’s the rhythm, the word choice, the emotional register, or the formality, and offer one rewrite that pulls it back into voice.”
- “Rewrite this paragraph in my voice without changing the meaning. Then in a separate note, tell me the three voice signatures you used to make the rewrite work, so I can use them again later.”
- “Generate three opening lines for a piece about [topic]. All three in my voice, but each one a different emotional entry point. One curious, one grounded, one disarmingly honest. Tell me which one you’d recommend and why.”
The reason I tell you to build this one first is because it teaches Claude who’s home before you ask it to do anything else. Without the Voice Skill, every other Skill is just generic AI with your tasks pasted on top. With it, every output starts from you. The piano stays in the writing. The garden stays in the writing. You stay in the writing.
The Repurpose Skill: How to Turn One Piece of Content Into a Week’s Worth
This is the second Skill to build, and it’s the one that taught me what AI is actually good for. Most of us pour ourselves into one strong piece of long-form work, a podcast episode, a Substack essay, a keynote, and then we let it die on the page because we don’t have the energy to chop it up into the smaller pieces it could become.
Before the Repurpose Skill, I used to spend hours turning one piece of content into several social posts, an email and Pinterest Pins. Now I spend twenty minutes. The Skill doesn’t replace the thinking. It replaces the retyping. That’s the difference, and it’s the difference that gives a working woman her week back.
Here’s what goes inside the Repurpose Skill. The formats you typically work in, and your distribution rhythm. If you publish a long-form piece on Monday and want it on Instagram by Wednesday and in inboxes by Thursday, the Skill needs to know that’s how you move.
Add the actual shape of your formats. The number of slides in your carousels. The structure of your emails. The length and tone of your Pinterest pins. Then add three real examples of each format, not just instructions. Claude works best when it has reference material, the way a new cook works best when you let her watch you make the dish a few times before she tries it on her own.
The three prompts that turn this Skill into a content engine.
- “Here’s the transcript of my latest long-form piece. Pull the three most quotable lines, and for each one, tell me which format it’s strongest in (Instagram carousel, Substack Note, Pinterest Pin, or email subject line) and why.”
- “Turn this essay into a 400-word email for my list. Keep the emotional arc but cut the word count in half. Open with the most disarming line in the original, end with one clear CTA, and flag any place you had to cut something I might want back in.”
- “Take the headline and first paragraph of this blog post and generate five Pinterest Pin titles. Each one should target a different searcher intent. Informational, aspirational, problem-aware, solution-aware, and identity-driven. Tell me which intent maps to each title.”
This one comes second because the Voice Skill makes everything that comes out of the Repurpose Skill sound like you. If you build the Repurpose Skill first, you save time but lose voice. If you build the Voice Skill first and the Repurpose Skill second, you save time and sound like yourself. That’s the order that works.
The piece you wrote on Monday gets to live all week now and that’s the gift.
The Email Skill: How to Write Emails Your List Actually Wants to Open
Email is the only platform you actually own. If you’ve been around me for a minute, you know that’s the heartbeat of everything I teach. The Email Skill goes third because by the time you’ve built the Voice Skill and the Repurpose Skill, you have the foundation to do the most important work, which is showing up in your reader’s inbox consistently.
Most business owners I know are bottlenecked on email not because they don’t know what to say, but because they don’t have the time to say it. The Email Skill is what gives you that time back. It’s the Skill that closed the gap between “I should send a weekly email” and “I do.”
Here’s what goes inside the Email Skill. Your email tone, which is almost always more intimate than your social tone. Email lives in someone’s inbox, the place she goes for letters from people she trusts, and the writing has to match that closeness. Add your typical email structure.
Do you open with a story, or go straight to the value? Do you sign off with a line that’s the same every time, or change it depending on the email? What’s your standard CTA placement? Then add three of your highest-performing emails as reference. Not three average ones, the three that actually moved the needle. The Skill needs to see what worked, not just what’s normal.
The three prompts that make this Skill earn its keep.
- “Draft three subject line options for an email about [topic]. All in my voice, all under 50 characters, each one targeting a different reader emotion. Curiosity, relief, or recognition. Predict which one would perform best with my audience and tell me why.”
- “Take this rough idea and turn it into a 400-word email for my list. Story-led opener, value in the middle, one clear CTA at the end. Use the structure of the highest-performing email in the reference set as a model, but make the voice match this draft.”
- “Audit this email draft for three things. Sentences where my voice slips, the moment a reader is most likely to drop off, and whether the CTA earns the build-up. Give me your verdict on each before suggesting any rewrites.”
Flodesk is the email platform I’d recommend if you’re starting from scratch. (Here’s my affiliate link if you want to try it for free.) The combination of a Skill that knows your voice plus a platform that doesn’t fight you is what makes weekly emails feel possible instead of impossible.
You can finally write the email. The Skill makes sure you actually do.
The Audience Skill: How to Make AI Write Directly to Your Ideal Reader
The Audience Skill goes fourth because by now you’ve taught Claude to sound like you (Voice), to move your work across formats (Repurpose), and to write the emails you’ve been meaning to write (Email). What’s left is the most important question of all. Who is on the other side of the writing?
Most people writing online have a vague sense of their reader and they leave it there. The result is content that lands shallowly for everyone and deeply for nobody. The Audience Skill fixes that. It holds your real reader, in detail, in present tense, the way you’d describe a friend you actually know.
Here’s what goes inside the Audience Skill. Not the demographic version of your reader, the psychographic one. Write a 300-word portrait of her in present tense.
What does she believe right now? What does she want to be true that isn’t yet? What is she afraid of? What does she keep half-trying and half-quitting? What stops her scroll? What would she screenshot at midnight and send to her sister? Skip the age and the income bracket. The work is in the inner life, not the outer one. The Skill is only as smart as the reader you put inside it, so this is the place where the work you do will pay you back the most.
The three prompts that make this Skill the smartest one in the room.
- “Read this draft as my reader. Mark the line where her interest peaks, the line where she might disengage, and the question she’s silently asking that this draft hasn’t answered yet.”
- “Rewrite the opening line of this draft three times. Each version targets a different layer of her. Surface (what she’d nod at), middle (what she’s been thinking but not saying), and deep (what she’s afraid is true). Tell me which layer the original was hitting.”
- “Generate the five questions my reader would ask after reading this, ranked from most likely to least likely. For the top one, tell me whether the answer belongs in this piece or in the next one.”
This one goes fourth because it requires the most internal work. Building the Audience Skill is the moment you have to actually decide who you’re writing to, and that decision shapes everything else. If you don’t have a clear picture of your reader yet, that’s exactly what we work through together inside my free 5-day email list building mini-course.
When you know who she is, the writing finds her on its own.
The Values Skill: How to Keep AI Aligned With What You Actually Stand For
The Values Skill goes last because it’s the one that holds all the others accountable. After you’ve built the four practical Skills, you’ll notice something quiet happening. You’re getting faster, your output is better, and you have more time. That’s the win. But there’s a question underneath the win, and it’s the one nobody else is going to ask you.
Faster toward what? More aligned with what? More of you, or more of a polished version of you that doesn’t quite feel like home anymore? I built the Values Skill the day I caught myself producing something that was good content but not good medicine. It was working. It just wasn’t mine.
Here’s what goes inside the Values Skill. Five to ten things you stand for, written in your own words, not in the language of branding or strategy. The things you’d never say or sell. The way you want your work to feel to the person on the other end. If you’ve ever written a values document, a mission statement, or a manifesto, it goes here. If you haven’t, this Skill becomes the reason to write one.
The Values Skill isn’t decoration. It’s the filter that runs before any other Skill activates, the way your conscience runs before you speak. Without it, the rest of the Skills make you efficient. With it, they make you aligned.
The three prompts that make this Skill the one that keeps the others honest.
- “Read this draft against my values. Identify any line that drifts from them, name which value it conflicts with, and offer a rewrite that holds the meaning while pulling back into alignment.”
- “Audit this CTA. Is the energy aligned with how I want to sell, or is it leaning on urgency, scarcity, or pressure I wouldn’t normally use? If it slips, rewrite it three different ways, each one closer to my actual values.”
- “Before I publish this, what’s the one question I’d want to ask myself about it? Generate three options. One strategic, one ethical, one personal. Tell me which one is most worth answering before I hit send.”
Nobody is going to hand you the Values Skill in a tutorial because nobody else has your values. You build it from the inside, and the Skill grows up alongside you as you keep clarifying what you actually stand for. This is the Skill that decides whether AI takes you toward a faster, hollower version of your work, or toward a slower, more honest version of you. Same tool, completely different timeline.
The Skills make you fast. The Values Skill makes sure fast is taking you somewhere you actually want to go and to me, that’s the most important part!
Frequently Asked Questions About Claude Skills for Business
What are Claude Skills?
Claude Skills are pre-configured setups inside the Claude AI platform that hold context, voice samples, instructions, and reference material so you don’t have to re-explain yourself every time you open a new chat. A Skill captures the way you do something so it can be applied across every Project you work on.
Do I need a paid Claude account to use Skills?
Yes. Skills are a feature inside Claude’s paid plans. Anthropic’s pricing changes from time to time, so check their site for the current details before subscribing.
How long does it take to set up a Claude Skill?
A rough first version takes 15 to 30 minutes. A polished Skill with strong voice samples and clear instructions takes one to two hours. The Skill gets smarter the more you use it.
Is using AI ethical?
There are real ethical and environmental questions about AI use, including data center energy and water consumption, training data sourcing, and labor impacts. The most responsible use is intentional, task-based AI use, using AI for the work that drains you, not for the work that defines you, so the time it gives back can be spent on what only a human can do.
Who benefits most from setting up Claude Skills?
Solopreneurs, small teams, content creators, and anyone whose work depends on consistent voice and tone across multiple formats. If your work has been bottlenecked by your own time, Skills are built for you.
Ready to Get Hours of Your Week Back?
Open Claude. Build the Voice Skill first. Paste in five of your strongest pieces of writing. Add the words you reach for and the ones you’d never use. Run the three prompts. The goal here isn’t perfection, it’s to make it exist.
The first thing you’ll notice is small. The output will sound a little more like you. The second thing is bigger. You’ll stop dreading the parts of your work that used to take all your energy. The third thing might take a few weeks to show up, and it’s the one that matters most.
You’ll get hours back. And then it’s on you to spend them on what actually matters to you. Robots can do the robot work. You go back to whatever your version of the piano is.
Want to go deeper on AI for your business?
I sat down with Natalie MacNeil and we went deep on AI and how to use it without losing what makes your work yours. This is the convo I wish I’d had before I started.
