How to Test and Optimise a Claude Skill

Once you create a Claude Skill, the next job is testing it in a real workflow and refining it until the outputs are consistent.

This guide shows you how to test and optimise a Claude Skill step by step, so you can spot weak instructions, improve output quality, and make the skill more reliable over time.

The best way to test and optimise Claude skill is to run it in a real workflow and watch exactly what happens. This guide walks you through the full process from first run to polished output.

Step 1: Test and Optimise Claude Skill With a Restart

Before you test and optimise Claude skill, you need to restart Claude to make sure the new skill is properly loaded. Type Ctrl+C twice to restart. Once you’re back, you should see your skill appear in the menu. In this case, the LinkedIn content pipeline skill.

Run the skill as-is first, without making any changes. This baseline run is what lets you actually test and optimise Claude skill effectively.

Step 2: Review the Output

Claude ran the skill and generated a Markdown file with LinkedIn content ideas for the week: 10 ideas in total. Claude then asked which ideas to move forward with. Only Tier 1 ideas were approved, leaving Claude to proceed with those five.

Test and Optimise Claude Skill — 10 ideas organised in an .md file

Step 3: Approve and Let Claude Execute

After approval, Claude uploaded the selected content to Notion. The link wasn’t immediately obvious, so when asked “Where is it?”, Claude returned a direct link. Following that link revealed all five LinkedIn content pieces fully structured and ready for the next step.

Claude skill output showing LinkedIn content posted to Notion with link

Step 4: Generate the Full Content

With the ideas approved, Claude generated the complete post content for each piece. Every post included:

A specific pillar format
A targeted keyword
SEO/GEO optimisation for that keyword

The content quality was strong enough to approve all five posts immediately.

Five LinkedIn posts approved with SEO optimization ready to publish

Step 5: Fix Formatting Issues

One issue worth flagging when you test and optimise Claude skill: Claude initially wrote all post content into MD files that could only be opened inside an IDE, leaving the actual Notion pages empty. After prompting Claude to move the content directly into each Notion page, the fix worked. Each page now shows the full post content, format, content pillars, SEO/GEO keywords, and publication status.

Notion pages showing full post content after Claude skill fix applied

Full LinkedIn post content uploaded onto Notion page successfully — Full LinkedIn post uploaded onto Notion

Wrapping Up

When you properly test and optimise Claude skill, you catch exactly these kinds of edge cases such as output going to the wrong place, approvals needing a nudge, formatting not matching the destination. The skill itself worked well: it generated structured, ready-to-publish LinkedIn content end-to-end inside Notion, with SEO targeting baked into every post. The real value of testing isn’t just confirming it works. It’s finding the small gaps that make the difference between a workflow you trust and one you’re always double-checking.