What you’ll know by the end of this check

What skills are, how they’re different from projects, and when to use each
How Anthropic’s built-in skills (for Excel, PowerPoint, Word, PDF) work and what they require
How to create a custom skill through conversation — no coding required

The one-sentence distinction that unlocks both features

Projects store knowledge. Skills perform tasks.

If you only remember one thing from Checks 05 and 07, make it this. They complement each other — but they’re not interchangeable, and confusing them leads to under-using both.

A project is the context Claude carries: your team’s documents, your style guides, your reference material. A skill is the how: the specific steps, order of operations, and methodology Claude follows when it executes a repeatable workflow. Your “customer call prep” skill can reference context from your CRM project. The project provides the what, the skill provides the how.

Anthropic’s built-in skills

If you’ve asked Claude to produce an Excel spreadsheet, a PowerPoint deck, a Word doc, or a PDF — you’ve already used a skill without knowing it. These Anthropic-built capabilities run automatically in the background when you make those requests.

Requirements: Code execution must be on in Settings. Skills must be toggled on. For Enterprise plans, an org Owner enables both in Admin settings first; everything flows down from there.

On Team plans, Skills are on by default at the org level.

Custom skills: encode your actual workflows

The real leverage is custom skills — instruction sets you build yourself that teach Claude how to run your specific processes.

Use cases worth naming: quarterly variance analysis methodology, brand voice review, a compliance checklist, a 1:1 prep template, a weekly status report format. Any workflow you run repeatedly where you want Claude to follow the same rigorous steps every time.

Creating one doesn’t require code. The flow:

Start a chat and tell Claude you want to create a skill for [your workflow]
Claude interviews you — what does this skill do, what does good output look like, when would you use it?
Upload reference materials if you have them (templates, examples of your best work, style guides)
Claude generates the skill file — you save it, and it’s ready

Skills appear in the Customize tab in the sidebar. You can edit them by chatting with Claude — it updates the files for you.

The distribution nuance (important if you’re rolling this out at scale)

Skills and Plugins are different distribution channels. Skills are markdown instruction files — uploaded manually as .zip files to org admin settings. No GitHub sync. A Skills API exists in beta for automation.

Plugins bundle skills + hooks + connectors as one installable package, and they do support GitHub sync — auto-deploy on every commit. If you’re setting up org-wide distribution, the strategic path is: package workflows as plugins, not standalone skills.

This matters if you’re a team lead or running an AI rollout. Individual contributors probably don’t need to care about this yet — just know the distinction exists.

Things to try right now (5 minutes)

Go to Settings and confirm Code execution and Skills are both on. Then start a chat and say: “I want to create a skill for [a task you do at least once a week].” Answer the questions Claude asks. See what it produces. You don’t have to save it — just see what the interview process surfaces about your own workflow.

The canonical version

Full official lesson at anthropic.skilljar.com/claude-101/383396 — includes the Projects vs. Skills comparison table and the custom skill creation walkthrough.

Ready to verify this check?

Finish the official lesson, then come back and mark this check verified on your flight log.