Skills
Skills are reusable instruction sets that tell Claude exactly how to perform a task. Think of them as templates or recipes. Instead of explaining your requirements every time, you create a Skill once and reuse it forever.
What you can do
Create custom writing styles (blog posts, emails, reports)
Build data analysis workflows that follow your methodology
Set up content generation with your brand voice and guidelines
Chain multiple Skills together for complex multi-step processes
Share Skills with your team for consistent output
Use variables like {topic} or {audience} for flexible inputs
Record a skill: demonstrate a task on screen once and Claude turns it into a skill (Claude for Mac)
Real-world example
You create a 'Weekly Report' Skill that takes {department} and {date_range} as inputs. Every Monday, you just say 'Run my Weekly Report for Marketing, last 7 days' and Claude generates a perfectly formatted report following your exact template.
New: record a skill with a screen recording
Besides writing a skill by hand or building one in conversation, there's now a third route: Record a skill. You record your screen while performing a task once, narrate out loud what you're doing and why, and Claude turns the recording into a reusable skill. No API key or integration with the software involved is needed — Claude learns the workflow from your screen.
You'll find it in the plus menu of Cowork in the Claude desktop app for Mac, on the Pro, Max and Team plans. Claude captures your screen, clicks, typing and voice, then proposes a skill that you review before saving. Saved skills appear under Customize > Skills and work like any other skill.
Update Claude for Mac and start a recording from the plus menu in Cowork (macOS will ask for Screen Recording and Accessibility permissions)
Perform the task once, the way you always do it
Narrate your reasoning out loud — the why behind each click is what makes the skill good
Stop the recording and review the skill Claude proposes
Save, test, and refine it like any other skill
Everything on your screen is captured during a recording, along with everything you say. Don't type passwords or secrets, and close private conversations and unrelated documents before you hit record.
