How to Actually Use Claude Code Skills (Full Breakdown)

Description

Claude Code Skills are portable workflow packages that teach Claude your repeatable processes - write once, run forever. This is the definitive breakdown of Anthropic's official guide on how to build, structure, and test Claude Skills properly. What to watch next: Opus VS Codex: https://youtu.be/_GAc6SFoQ9k Context Engineering Deep Dive: https://youtu.be/77IUaCo3Zd0 Selling Agentic: https://youtu.be/ab-0_efk9HQ Timestamps: 00:00 - What are Claude Code Skills? 01:30 - Progressive disclosure (why this changes everything) 03:00 - Skill structure and organization 05:12 - Writing the perfect description 05:55 - Bad vs good description examples 07:25 - Real-world skill.md walkthrough 08:54 - Imperative vs prompt-based skills 10:19 - Execution steps and tool integration 11:10 - Scripts vs context window (97% reduction) 11:47 - References and assets 12:49 - Invocation control (who can trigger what) 14:10 - Model routing and subagents 15:04 - What makes a good vs bad instruction 16:22 - Degrees of freedom 17:35 - Feedback loops and self-improving skills 18:51 - MCP vs scripts (when to use each) 20:14 - 5 design patterns from Anthropic 22:59 - Testing your skills (3 essential tests) 25:15 - Iterating with Claude A/B method 27:51 - Setting up your environment 29:54 - Skills marketplace and plugins 31:27 - Live demo: building a skill from scratch 36:27 - Live demo: testing in a fresh session -- Work with me: 🤝 Ready to transform your business? Let's talk: https://bit.ly/3TinLo5 🚀 Join my community → https://tinyurl.com/aitransformationacademy 💡 Add me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mansel-scheffel/ [ABOUT ME] If you're new here — I'm Mansel. In 2010, I left South Africa with nothing but a laptop and a digital piano. I taught myself IT, broke into cybersecurity in London, and built two consulting businesses - one in cyber, one in cloud - scaling solo to $52K+/month. Today, I run atomicOps, an AI consultancy based in New York where we help mid-market companies turn AI chaos into scalable systems as a transformation partner. I also help aspiring AI builders think like an architect, design agentic AI solutions, and sell them to businesses in my skool community.