After releasing Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Claude Haiku 4.5 in the past few weeks, Anthropic on Thursday announced a new feature called Skills that will be available in Claude “to improve how it performs specific tasks.” Put differently, Claude will have access to folders that contain specific information about a particular activity, with Skills primarily targeting work-related chores. However, the feature won’t be available to Claude’s free users, as it’ll require a Claude Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise subscription.
The Skills folders can include documents, instructions, and even code that Claude can access when performing a specific task. The AI will look at the available Skills it can use and access one or more of them to complete a task. In the example below, Anthropic shows a Claude Skill for a made-up company called Crabacadabra that includes brand guidelines, documents, and a script. The user uploads the files to Claude to create the new Skill.
Later, the user asks Claude to create a pitch deck for the fictional company’s upcoming game, and the chatbot inspects the previously created Skill to ensure it stays on brand. The AI also accesses a PowerPoint Skill to create a presentation. Tasked with creating posters, the AI accesses a poster design Skill to deliver the required assets. The PowerPoint and poster design Skills were already available in Claude.
How to make your own Claude Skills
Anthropic notes that once created, Skills are available everywhere the Claude chatbot is available, including the Claude apps, Claude Code, and the API. The AI will have access to any existing Skills, such as those Anthropic has built into Claude for common tasks, like document creation, and others, as long as that Skill is turned on. The ability to create custom Skills is what really stands out.
As in the example above, users can create specific Skills for specific workflows and upload them to Claude. The video below shows a user asking Claude for help creating an image editor Skill. Interestingly, Claude uses a different Skill to provide suggestions, and the user picks the features they want in the new Skill, like support for image rotation and cropping images at the center. The AI creates the Skill and makes it available as a downloadable package. The user will then upload the Skill to Claude to use it.
The Skills feature is an entry-level way of giving Claude agentic behavior. By using Skills for repetitive tasks that need to stick to particular guidelines, Claude can be an even better tool. Rather than repeating the same set of instructions and uploading the same files, users can create Skills, and the AI will then select the ones that fit best for any given task.
Claude Pro and Max users can enable Skills in the Settings menu. Claude Team and Enterprise users will have access to Skills once subscription admins enable them. Separately, Anthropic on Thursday announced a Microsoft 365 MCP connector for Claude and an enterprise search that lets Claude browse company-related assets for specific information. Add to that Claude’s ability to create Excel, Word, and PDF files, and it becomes a powerful enterprise tool.
