How to set up Claude Skills
for consulting and project work

The shift: a skill is the repeatable job written down once

A skill is a folder holding one file - SKILL.md - that describes a job completely: what goes in, how the work is done, what the output looks like, and the rules that never bend. Its description tells Claude when the skill applies, so Claude brings it out on its own when the job matches - or you invoke it explicitly by naming it. Either way, the method runs identically every time, for every client, in every chat.

This is where Claude has a structural edge. ChatGPT users who build a kit like this have to copy it into every single Project by hand, then re-copy it everywhere when anything changes. Claude's skills are account-level: upload once, and they work across all your conversations automatically. Your Projects then only carry what's actually different per client. The kit becomes infrastructure instead of clipboard cargo.

Creating your own skill

The ten skills cover the standard consulting arc, but your practice has jobs of its own - a board pack, a tender response, a workshop agenda. Any job you've done the same way three times is a skill waiting to be written. The fastest way to write one is to ask Claude to draft it. Copy this prompt and fill in the brackets:

You write Claude skills. A skill is a folder holding one SKILL.md file:
YAML frontmatter with a name and a description that tells Claude when
to use the skill, then the instructions.

Draft a new skill for this repeatable job: [describe the job - what
comes in, what should come out, who reads the output].

Structure the instructions in five sections:
1. What this does
2. What you give it
3. How to do the work
4. Output layout
5. Rules

Make every instruction specific enough that the output looks the same
no matter who runs it. Before drafting, ask me up to three questions
if anything about the job is unclear.

When you're happy with the draft: create a new folder inside your master Skills folder, named after the skill. Save the draft into it as SKILL.md. Zip that folder, then upload the zip in Customize > Skills. Your new skill now works across all your conversations, exactly like the ten that came with the kit.

Editing a skill: the update loop

Skills improve with use. The first time a status report comes out with a section you always delete, that's not an annoyance - it's an edit waiting to be made. The loop is always the same three moves:

1. Edit the master - open the skill's SKILL.md in the folder on your computer and change it there. Never anywhere else.
2. Delete the old upload - in Customize > Skills, remove the current version of that skill.
3. Upload the new zip - zip the edited folder and upload it. Every conversation now runs the improved version.

What the files actually are

Every skill in the kit is a markdown file - plain text with light markup, where a hash makes a heading and a dash makes a list item. It opens in Notepad, TextEdit, Word, or any editor you already have, so there's no special software between you and your own method. AI tools read and write markdown natively because it carries structure without any formatting baggage, which is exactly why the skills format is built on it. If you can edit a text file, you can maintain this entire kit.