Claude Academy
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Introduction to agent skills

Build, configure, and share skills in Claude Code — reusable markdown instructions that Claude applies automatically to matching tasks. Covers creating your first skill through team distribution and troubleshooting.

6 lessons1 hr
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What you’ll learnBy the end of this course, you’ll be able to
  • Explain what skills are, where they live, and how Claude Code matches them to requests
  • Create a skill from scratch with valid SKILL.md frontmatter and verify it loads
  • Write effective skill descriptions and restrict tool access with allowed-tools
  • Organize larger skills using progressive disclosure, reference files, and executable scripts
  • Choose between skills, CLAUDE.md, subagents, hooks, and MCP servers for a given use case
  • Share skills through project repositories, plugins, enterprise managed settings, and custom subagents
  • Diagnose triggering, loading, priority-conflict, and runtime issues with the skills validator and claude --debug

Skills let you stop repeating yourself and start teaching Claude once. Instead of pasting the same guidance into every prompt, you write it down in a place Claude Code reads automatically when a request matches, and it applies consistently every time.

This course takes you from your first SKILL.md to a full skills-based workflow that keeps Claude consistent, context-efficient, and aligned with your team's standards.