🧩 Building with skills

You don’t create a skill for everything. The rule is simple: if you does the same thing over and over again — and every time you have to reexplain the right way to the AI — that’s the sign. The skill saves that "right way" so you never have to repeat the explanation again.

Think of something you repeat every week: summarizing a meeting in the same format, answering the same kind of email, or putting together the same report. Each of these tasks is a candidate to become a skill. For tasks you do just once, no—you can simply ask directly.

Every skill has just two parts, and neither requires code. The first is the trigger: WHEN this skill should kick in. The second are the instructions: HOW to do it, step by step, and how to tell if it turned out well.

It's the same idea as a sign in the kitchen: “when a cake order comes in (trigger), follow these steps (instructions)." The clearer the trigger, the better the AI gets at deciding when to use the skill. The clearer the instructions, the more the result matches what you want.

Enough theory—let's write a real one. You won't program anything: you'll write a instruction text in Portuguese and paste it into Claude. That text is the skill. Below is a complete, real example, ready to use: a skill that turns a jumble of meeting notes into an organized summary.

Notice the three things every good skill has: the goal at the top, the variable parts marked with < > (what changes with each use) and the verification at the end. Copy it, replace the parts between < >, and see the magic.

SKILL: Resumo de reunião

OBJETIVO: transformar minhas anotações soltas de uma reunião
em um resumo curto, padronizado e fácil de repassar.

QUANDO USAR (gatilho): sempre que eu disser
"resuma esta reunião" e colar minhas anotações.

PASSOS:
1. Leia as anotações de <cole aqui suas anotações da reunião>.
2. Escreva no máximo 5 linhas de "Decisões tomadas".
3. Liste as "Tarefas", cada uma no formato:
   - [responsável] o que fazer — até <prazo>.
4. Aponte em "Pendências" o que ficou sem resposta.
5. Use o tom <formal ou informal> e escreva em português.

NÃO FAÇA: não invente decisões que não estão nas anotações;
se algo estiver vago, marque com "(confirmar)".

COMO VERIFICAR (deu certo se):
- O resumo cabe em uma tela, sem enrolação.
- Toda tarefa tem responsável E prazo.
- Nada foi inventado além do que estava nas anotações.

No skill is ready-made. The first version almost always gets some detail wrong—it misses a deadline, runs too long, or changes the tone. That's normal, and it's exactly how the work cycle goes: run it, see where it went wrong, and correct the instruction exactly what caused the error.

The secret is not to throw away the skill when it makes a mistake. Instead, ask: "which line in my instructions made this ambiguous?" and fix only that line. Each adjustment makes the skill sharper — and it makes fewer mistakes with each round.

Once the skill works, it becomes a your asset — something you write once that keeps paying off. Save the text somewhere easy to find (a notes app, a document, a skills folder) so you can paste it when you need it, without rewriting it.

And best of all: skills are easy to pass along. Since it’s just text in Portuguese, you can send it to a colleague and they can use it right away. A good shared skill standardizes the whole team — everyone delivers in the same format, with the same quality.

So you don’t have to start from scratch, here’s a starter kit: four skills that work for almost anyone. Start with one—the one that best fits your week—and use what you learned in the previous topics to adapt it to your style.