You probably didn't realize it, but MCP

had a big problem. But Claude's new

feature, Skills, solves that very

problem. Skills is actually a feature

that shows us how the future AI

landscape is going to look. It's been

some time since we realized that there

are a lot of repetitive tasks that we do

with AI. To solve this, projects were

introduced, but they only solved a

limited part of the problem. So in this

video, I'll take you through what skills

are, how you can use them, and to help

you solve your repetitive tasks, how you

can easily build your own just by

prompting. Essentially, skills are just

a collection of instructions and

resources that we provide to Claude to

give it specific capabilities. Instead

of functioning as a general purpose

agent, Claude becomes a specialized

agent with additional capabilities. Each

skill that you create inside your

project resides in a skills folder in

yourclaude folder. Each skill added to

your project is identified by the name

of its folder. For example, in this

project, we have three skills, each

serving its own specific purpose. Inside

the skills folder, there are several

types of files, but the most important

one is the skill.md file. At the top of

the skill.md file, it has a name and a

short description. This helps Claude

identify what the skill is called and

what it actually does. It serves as a

detailed document that references all

related files and provides instructions

on how to use them. In addition to the

skill.md, the folder may also contain

reference files that further guide how

to use the skill. For instance, in our

PDF extractor skill, there is an

extraction guide that helps Claude

understand how to extract textbased

information accurately. These are often

supplemented with executable scripts

that can be run to perform the specific

task the skill is designed for such as

the extract text tool that when run

basically just extracts all the text

from the given PDF. Now let's actually

see these skills in action. I'll be

using the Claude desktop app to show you

how they work. You can view the skills

under the capabilities section in the

settings. Here you can upload your own

or use the ones that are already

provided by Claude itself. For example,

I can actually use their official MCP

builder skills to make new ones. It used

the web search tool to access the Figma

documentation and after retrieving it,

the skill generated the files that can

be integrated into our application using

the MCP builder skill. It also provided

a guide on how to include the MCP server

in our project. This is because at the

back end, it has the necessary tools and

built-in context that is required to

build out these MCPs. But these skills

are not only limited to developer use

cases. Anthropic also added these really

creative use cases such as this

algorithm art skill which designs a

colorful geometric pattern with

animations. It first read the

documentation, used the appropriate

tools, and then generated the animation.

This is what the prompt created. You can

run it, modify the settings, and

experiment with different options to see

the results for yourself. Here I used

the canvas design skill to create

infographics. It basically read the MD

files that it needed for the context and

also ran a few scripts as its tools.

After it was complete, this is what it

generated based on the design

specifications. There were some problems

with it though. For example, the text

that was inserted was too small. I did

try to generate it again, but it didn't

make much difference. There must have

been some problems in the tools of the

skill. Other than that, Claude also

introduced specific skills related to

documents such as Word and PDF files,

Excel sheets, or even PowerPoint

presentations. I tried creating a

PowerPoint and saw that it basically

converted simple HTML pages into a

PowerPoint. While the design that it

made here was too simple, I feel like

with better prompts or even tweaking the

skill a little bit would improve the

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now you might be wondering if MCP

already exists, why should we use Claude

skills? To answer that, we first need to

understand the primary difference

between MCP and Claude skills. Even

though Claude skills and MCP might seem

like they overlap, they actually don't.

To put it simply, MCP is about adding

more capabilities to Claude that it

doesn't already have by giving it access

to external tools. On the other hand,

Claude skills are designed to enhance

internal functionality. Skills contain

prompts, instructions, data, or scripts

grouped in a folder to help Claude

handle specialized tasks efficiently.

This reduces setup time and ensures

consistency in repeated tasks. But

before these skills, people used to

implement these internal tools with MCPs

as well. But skills solve one of the

biggest problems that those MCPS had.

While MCP exposes all the tools and

their descriptions directly to the model

in the context window, greatly expanding

the context window, skills handle this

more efficiently. Instead of including a

large prompt with many lines from the

file, skills only expose the initial

name and description to the model,

allowing it to identify which skill it

has. The description is a oneline

summary that briefly explains the

functionality, and this is all it needs

in its context window. This is how

Claude knows what skill it has and how

to use them. And whenever it detects the

need to use a certain skill, it can

refer to its documentation for further

details. But Claude could have made

these skills so much more powerful.

However, they implemented a limitation

which turned out to be its biggest flaw.

Claude skills cannot use the network.

This means that they can't send any API

requests. This means that you cannot

make a Figma skill and use it as the

Figma MCP because it uses the Figma API

to get the design data. However, there

is a workaround. The skill can use the

web search tool from either claw desktop

or clawed code to fetch the data it

wants from the web, but it still won't

be able to request data as the Figma MCP

does. By now, you've probably realized

how much repetitive work you can

automate with these skills, and you're

probably thinking if you would need

another course to learn how to make new

skills. But Anthropic offered a really

clever solution to that by adding in a

skill that actually builds skills. You

can use the skill builder to build out

skills for any use case right in Claude.

You just tell it what you need and based

on your requirements it may ask you

further questions and after that it just

builds out your skills including all the

markdown documentation and the tool

scripts as well. But this is only

available in the claude desktop app. If

you want to use it with claude code then

you'll have to get the source code of

the skill builder as they launch skills.

Anthropic also released a repository

that contains many commonly used skills

and in that you'll find the skill

creator as well. We'll also link it down

in the description below. Now to get it

inside Claude code, you need to download

the skills and add them to the Claude

folder in your project. After that,

Claude will automatically recognize that

it now has a skill called skill creator.

Now using the skill creator, I'll ask

Claude code to create a new skill that

specifically optimizes a website for

SEO. After Claude was done, it had

generated a new skill that included all

the necessary tools and scripts required

for it to function effectively. I also

went ahead and created these three

skills, each with its own assets and

skill file. To test out the SEO skill, I

used it on a pre-made site that I was

building. It went ahead and analyzed the

website's current performance and then

applied a few improvements. In the end,

the overall performance score increased

from 86 to 94. This shows how you can

use different types of skills for

various use cases for your application.

You've probably seen the new chat GPT

apps and widgets which allow you to get

responses in these beautiful UI formats.

With skills, you can unlock another

useful capability of Claude, the ability

to use visualizations in your local

environment for various use cases. For

example, if you want to analyze your

data visually, using these skills with

Claude will be very helpful. With these

Claude skills, you can use

visualizations in your own local

environment just like in chat GPT. It's

different from chat GPT because chat GPT

can use API calls and HTTP requests to

communicate over the internet while

Claude's environment is fully local and

cannot access the internet. However, we

can still use these skills to create

beautiful visualizations of anything.

For example, I created a skill that uses

a consistent HTML template to render a

visualization for the search data. So

essentially, you can think of it as

widgets inside claude code. I gave it a

prompt to visualize the top 10 trending

AI tools right now and it ran several

scripts and web searches. In the end, we

got a really beautiful visualization. It

showed me the highest ranking AI tools

currently available. The animation was

also very smooth, and now whenever I ask

for new AI tools, I'll get them

displayed in this same widget format

every time. That brings us to the end of

this video. If you'd like to support the

channel and help us keep making videos

like this, you can do so by using the

super thanks button below. As always,

thank you for watching and I'll see you

in the next