How to Set Up Claude Skills: Beginner Guide

Claude Skills let you save repeatable instructions and workflows so Claude can follow them consistently across tasks.

In this guide, you’ll learn what Claude Skills are, why they matter, and how to set up Claude Skills step by step in just a few minutes.

What you’ll learn:

What is a Claude Skill?
How to set up Claude Skills

Who this is for:

Claude beginners who want to set up Claude Skills properly
Power users who want to follow specific workflows consistently

What is a skill?

A skill is a set of instructions that teaches Claude how to handle specific tasks or workflows. It’s a perfect way to customise Claude for your specific needs, such as writing in your brand tone and manner or designing specific UI that matches your company’s brand book.

Instead of re-explaining your preferences, processes, or specific needs in every conversation, skill allows you to teach Claude just once and Claude will instantly learn how to use that skill and apply it in every conversation.

How to set up Claude Skills

To install skills, we can use skills.sh by Vercel.

It is essentially a library of different Claude skills made by the community (they’re all FREE!).

Skills.sh community library showing free Claude skills to install — skills.sh by Vercel

Click on a skill you like.

I’ll start by installing the find-skills skill.
This skill allows Claude to automatically search for a suitable skill for the task.

Copy the code at the top of the page, below the title.

Copying the skill installation code from skills.sh page — Setup Claude skills

Paste this code into the new terminal.

⚠️ Note: Do not paste this to Claude ‼️
To create a new terminal, press the ‘+’ button on the top right (see yellow box).

Creating a new terminal using the plus button in top right

Terminal showing Claude skill installation command running

Install the skill

Follow the instructions on the screen.
Make sure to install on ‘Claude Code’. (Use arrow keys to navigate and SPACE to select!)

Selecting install on Claude Code option with arrow keys

Install for the project.

⚠️ Note: You can install it for ‘Global’ BUT not recommended, because the skill gets installed only on this computer. When we try to load this project on another computer, we won’t have access to this skill.

Confirming project-level installation for Claude Code skill

Select ‘yes’ for the rest of the questions.

Verifying the Claude skill has been successfully installed

Verify whether the skill has been installed.

Open Claude Code and type: /skills
Then you should be able to see all the installed skills.
⚠️ Note: Make sure to restart Claude Code after installing a skill. Otherwise, it won’t be recognised.

Claude Code recognizing installed skill after restart confirmation

Good to go!
Every time we want to use a skill, we can tell Claude to use /find-skills or simply type: find skills. If we don’t specify, Claude will automatically use it when it thinks it’s necessary. (But it’s good to tell Claude to use a skill explicitly)

Useful Claude Skills

In this post, I’ve installed skills focused on content generation and research for content creation to automate and streamline my content-generating process. However, there are many more skills available for you to search for based on your own purpose and the workflow you want to streamline, so I hope this guide was useful for getting started with Claude skills.

Skill	Purpose	Link
skill-creator	Helps create new custom skills ourselves	https://skills.sh/anthropics/skills/skill-creator
reddit	Searches Reddit posts, comments	https://skills.sh/resciencelab/opc-skills/reddit
writing-linkedin-posts	Create engaging, authentic LinkedIn posts that drive meaningful engagement and establish thought leadership.	https://skills.sh/jamesgray007/hoai-course/writing-linkedin-posts
keyword-research	This skill helps you discover, analyse, and prioritise keywords for SEO and GEO content strategies.	https://skills.sh/aaron-he-zhu/seo-geo-claude-skills/keyword-research
researching-ai-news needs Perplexity MCP*	Research and compile AI news from across the industry, covering major companies and emerging trends.	https://skills.sh/jamesgray007/hoai-course/researching-ai-news
brand-storytelling	Help the user craft compelling narratives that make their brand memorable using techniques from 30 product leaders and storytelling experts.	https://skills.sh/refoundai/lenny-skills/brand-storytelling
social-content	You are an expert social media strategist.	https://skills.sh/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/social-content