In this section I review one AI-powered application and demonstrate how it can be used to create new value. I include concrete examples and lessons learned from actual work with customers, and only recommend tools that I have used extensively myself and with customers.
Teaching AI your workflows with Claude Skills
One of the biggest frustrations I hear from business leaders using AI is inconsistency. You find a prompt that works brilliantly for creating sales reports. You save it. You share it with your team. But next month, you need to tweak it slightly. The format changes. Someone on your team modifies it differently. Before long, you have five versions of "the sales report prompt" scattered across documents, and no one knows which one actually works best.
Anthropic recently introduced Claude Skills, and I think it's one of the most elegant and human-aligned shifts in how we work with AI. Instead of re-prompting the same instructions every time or building complex "agents," Skills let you teach Claude modular capabilities that it draws from as needed - just like how humans activate certain skills only when they're relevant.
We naturally think in skills - not in "agents." We learn, practice, and combine skills. We upgrade them, reuse them, and transfer them to new contexts. Claude Skills mirrors exactly that:
Modular: Each skill handles one focused capability.
Composable: Multiple skills work together for complex outcomes.
Upgradeable: Improve one skill without retraining the whole system.
Explainable: You can see what a skill does and when it's triggered.
Efficient: Only the relevant skill loads into context when needed.
It's an architecture that feels psychologically right because it's how humans actually grow and apply competence. The agent is the person, and the skills are what that person knows and can do.
How Skills work
Each Skill is a self-contained package - a folder containing instructions, metadata, logic, and resources. When you're working with Claude, it scans available Skills and automatically loads the relevant ones for your task. You don't manually select them. Claude recognizes when a Skill applies and brings it in.
Here's what makes this powerful: Skills are token-efficient. They take up just 30-50 tokens until needed, then Claude loads only the essential information. It's like how humans learn - we don't keep every detail of every skill actively in mind. We recall what we need when we need it.
Even better: Skills can include executable code. For tasks where traditional programming is more reliable than AI generation - like complex Excel formulas or PowerPoint formatting - Skills let Claude run actual code instead of trying to generate its way through.
This directly addresses hallucinations, the term we're exploring this issue. When Claude uses a Skill with executable code, it's not guessing or generating based on patterns. It's following deterministic, reliable procedures you've defined.
How I use Claude Skills
I started experimenting with Skills immediately after they launched, and they've become integral to several of my workflows:
Newsletter research and drafting: I created a Skill for researching and drafting this newsletter. It knows the structure I follow - Leadership Principles, Business Value, Tool Deep Dive, One New Term. It understands my tone, how I connect concepts, and the level of detail my audience expects. Instead of pasting style guidelines into every conversation, the Skill automatically ensures consistency across issues.
LinkedIn content creation: I built a Skill for creating LinkedIn posts that match my voice and formatting preferences. It knows I use clear structure, specific examples, and practical takeaways. When I want to share an insight or concept, the Skill helps me draft content that sounds like me - not generic AI output that needs heavy editing.
Branded asset creation: I use Skills for creating branded materials that follow specific visual and content guidelines. The Skill includes brand colors, typography standards, formatting preferences, and content structure. Whether I'm creating a slide deck, a one-pager, or a workshop template, the Skill ensures everything looks and reads consistently.
Several organizations are already seeing significant business impact:
Rakuten: Streamlining accounting workflows: Rakuten uses Skills to transform management accounting and finance processes. Claude processes multiple spreadsheets, catches critical anomalies, and generates reports following the organization's specific procedures. What once took a full day now takes one hour - and with greater consistency because the Skill encodes best practices everyone follows.
Notion: Reducing prompt complexity: Notion uses Skills to streamline workflows by eliminating the need for users to write complex prompts. The Skills encode common workflow patterns, so team members can simply describe what they need rather than engineering elaborate instructions.
Beyond the conceptual elegance, there are specific features that make Skills valuable in practice:
Composable collaboration: Multiple Skills work together seamlessly. If I'm creating a quarterly business review, Claude might use my financial analysis Skill, my presentation formatting Skill, and my executive communication Skill simultaneously. I don't orchestrate this - Claude figures out what's needed.
Portable across environments: The same Skill works in the Claude web app, Claude Code, and via the API. Build once, use everywhere. Share with your team through version control.
Reduces hallucinations: By combining explicit instructions with executable code, Skills provide grounded, reliable outputs. When Claude uses your accounting Skill's Excel formulas, it's not generating formulas that might work - it's running your tested, proven code.
Doesn't bloat context: Skills don't consume your context window until they're actually needed. You can have dozens of Skills available without sacrificing performance.
Easy to create: The "skill-creator" Skill guides you through creating custom workflows interactively. It asks about your workflow, generates the folder structure, formats the files, and bundles necessary resources. No manual file editing required.
Finance & Accounting: Standardize financial models, ensure formula consistency, automate monthly reporting formats, validate data against compliance rules
Sales & Marketing: Create pitch decks following brand guidelines, generate personalized outreach using proven templates, analyze campaign data with consistent frameworks
Product & Engineering: Document features using your team's standards, create technical specifications following architecture patterns, generate test cases based on your quality framework
HR & Operations: Process employee feedback into standardized reports, create onboarding materials matching company culture, analyze survey data with consistent methodologies
Skills are powerful, but they're not magic. A few things to keep in mind:
Requires clear workflows: Skills work best when you can articulate your process. If your approach is highly intuitive or "it depends" on tacit knowledge, Skills might not capture that nuance.
Code execution security: Since Skills can run code, only use Skills from trusted sources - your own team or verified repositories. Malicious Skills could access your data.
Initial investment: While the skill-creator helps, building sophisticated custom Skills requires understanding your workflow deeply enough to encode it. That upfront work pays off through consistency and time savings.
Availability: Skills are currently available for Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise Claude users. Teams need admin approval to enable them.
If you have Claude Pro or higher, enable Skills in Settings. Start with Anthropic's built-in Skills for Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and PDF creation - these work immediately without any setup.
Then try creating a simple custom Skill. Pick one recurring task where you find yourself giving Claude the same instructions repeatedly. Use the skill-creator Skill to encode that workflow. See how it feels to teach AI your way of working.
The future of working with AI isn't about better prompts. It's about teaching AI your workflows once and having them available consistently - bringing AI design closer to how humans actually think and grow: by learning, adapting, and applying mastery in context.
And that's something everyone can intuitively understand
To dive deeper into Claude Skills and how to use them watch this episode of How I AI with Claire Vo.