Module 1 · Claude Cowork Fundamentals
Your first reusable skill
Turn repetitive work into a reusable playbook
A skill is a reusable playbook folder that Claude can load when a matching task appears. You can also invoke it directly by name, but the point is bigger than a command: the workflow is packaged once, then reused whenever the same kind of work returns.
What a skill is, concretely
Imagine that every Monday you do the same thing: take the notes from the team meeting, turn them into formatted minutes, pull out the task list, and draft a summary. A skill means writing the playbook for this work once. From then on, "turn these notes into minutes" is enough for Claude to recognize the workflow and apply the right steps.
Analogy: a skill is like a recipe taped to the fridge door. You no longer improvise each time — you follow the same known steps and get a consistent result.