Imagine constantly rewriting, say, a 500 word
instruction manual over and over just to get
one consistent result from your AI. Right. The
real headache in a lot of modern AI work isn't
about being creative, you know. Yeah. It's the
repetition. It's just exhausting. Yeah. We're
talking about serious prompt fatigue, that burnout
feeling. But there's a fix now from a major platform.
And the key thing is it's actually portable.
Welcome to the deep dive. Today we're digging
into the source material on this new AI feature
they're calling Skills. And this isn't just like
a minor shortcut. It feels more like a fundamental
shift, moving away from writing those endless
prompts towards building reusable, detailed rule
books for your AI. So we're going to unpack what
these skills really are, how they stack up against
older methods like custom instructions, and importantly,
how you can actually build them and then use
them across different platforms. Think Claude,
ChatGPT, maybe others down the line. Yeah, our
goal today is pretty straightforward. Give you
a clear map, a way to create these powerful portable
abilities that could genuinely save you hours.
Okay, let's unpack that starting point. Before
this skills idea, pretty much everything relied
on you crafting that perfect prompt, right? The
big instruction you feed the AI. Totally. Need
a financial analysis. Yeah. Okay, write a huge
detailed prompt. Need a presentation draft. Another
one. Complex job search plan. Yep, you guessed
it. Another massive prompt. And doing this day
in, day out. Yeah. It's mentally draining. You're
basically tweaking similar instructions constantly.
And that friction, it just makes hard work feel
tiring and inefficient. The source used a good
analogy. It's like having this incredibly smart
assistant, but you still have to explain exactly
how to make coffee, exactly how to organize files
every single morning, that constant reset. It's
taxing, even with a template. Precisely. But
why is that constant re -explaining so mentally
tough when the AI is so powerful? Well, it boils
down to the mental load, right? Switching context
and having to double check that every single
instruction is perfect every single time. So
what's really interesting is how a skill is defined
here. It's basically a detailed rule book. It
holds all the instructions, all the preferences,
for one specific task. And you only build it
once. And the key part, I think, is that the
AI uses the right skill automatically when the
topic comes up. You don't have to, like, tag
it or remember to say use skill X. That auto
detection feels like the real game changer. Oh,
absolutely. I mean, I still wrestle with prompt
drift myself sometimes, you know, where the AI
kind of forgets the complex rules you gave it
way back at the start of a long chat. This auto
detection thing, that could be a huge step away
from that whole problem. OK, so let's try to
dist - The older methods, like custom instructions
in ChatGPT, they're sort of like one general
sticky note the AI always reads, right? Which
can cause issues. Exactly. That's how you end
up with your super formal business expert AI
trying to write a love poem using corporate jargon.
It doesn't know when not to apply the instruction.
Skills, though, are different. They're like having
a whole shelf of specialized books. The AI only
grabs the Excel data analysis skill book when
you actually start talking about spreadsheets
and data. Which makes the output cleaner, more
accurate. And you can have, what, maybe 20 of
these specialized rule books ready to go. But
these complex rules, they need a simple container,
right? How are they packaged so they can be shared
easily? Yeah, it's surprisingly simple. They're
just plain text files, usually marked down, all
bundled up together in a standard zip file. And
the nice thing is, you don't need to be some
kind of prompt engineering guru to get started.
The AI actually guides you through making one.
Yeah, the process starts pretty easily in the
Claude settings. You just find skills or maybe
capabilities, turn on custom skills, and you're
good to go. Then you start a chat. Say you want
to create a new skill. And this seems important.
You ask Claude to act like an expert in building
these things. Then it starts asking you the key
questions. That's right. The AI will ask about
the primary goal for the skill, the specific
brand tone of voice you need and who your target
audience is. It kind of forces you to get clear
on the basics. The source material gave some
good examples, like the brand voice was defined
as a friendly, knowledgeable friend and there
were ban words, never used cheap or by now or
shocking sale. The main goal was engagement,
explicitly not direct selling. And then Claude
digs deeper. It asks platform -specific stuff,
like what's the ideal length for a Facebook post
using this skill? What's the hashtag strategy
for Instagram? The right tone for TikTok. That
back and forth really refines it. OK, but hold
on. If I'm, say, a freelancer juggling maybe
five or six different recurring tasks, is it
really worth investing the time to spell out,
like, 15 super detailed rules for every single
platform within one skill? Well, that's kind
of the point of asking the AI to act as the expert
builder. It asks better, more targeted questions
upfront. It helps you build that solid foundation
correctly the first time, instead of you having
to patch up mistakes later. Saves time in the
long run. Okay, this is where it gets really
practical. Let's look at the actual rules from
the example skill and the storage material, the
social media content plan skill. Yeah, this was
cool. For Facebook, the rules were super specific,
really sticky, length, strictly 150 to 200 words,
title. always IN, all CPPS, and I have to include
a main keyword, you must use bullet points. And
the post absolutely has to end with one open
-ended question to get comments going. Then for
Instagram, totally different vibe. Focus on feelings,
keep it short, under 50 words, period. And crucially,
the rulebook demanded three specific brand hashtags,
like hard -coded ones, plus five relevant trending
hashtags. No deviation. And TikTok was fascinating.
It broke it down into a ready -made 15 -second
video script structure. Three scenes. Scene 1,
seconds 0 to 3, that's your hook. Scene 2, seconds
4 to 10, present the solution. Scene 3, 11 to
15 seconds, call to action. It even asked for
a suggested style of audio. Wow. So, okay, instead
of writing this monster prompt explaining all
those platform nuances every single time, you
just say something simple like, topic, benefits
of drinking enough water, use my social media
skill, and boom, the skill handles all those
detailed platform -specific rules automatically.
That's the power of systemizing it, right? So,
when you give that simple instruction, what's
the key rule that stops the AI from accidentally
using that short, punchy Instagram caption on
Facebook? It's that strict length requirement.
Under 50 words for Insta versus the mandatory
150 to 200 for Facebook, the rule book kind of
polices itself based on those constraints. Mid
-roll sponsor, red placeholder. Now, the part
that makes this whole concept potentially revolutionary,
I think, is the portability. Because these skills
are just structured text files inside a zip folder,
you can build your rulebook in Claude and then
just use it in ChatGPT. Exactly. You just upload
that zip file to a version of ChatGPT that can
read files, GPT -4 for instance, and then give
it one critical instruction. Something like,
act like an AI that follows 100 % of the rules
inside the uploaded file. So you're essentially
giving ChatGPT the exact same detailed training
manual that your Claude skill uses. That means
you can get consistent on -brand output across
different AI platforms. You're not locked into
one vendor. That's huge. Yeah, and there was
another clever trick mentioned. You could actually
use a different AI to sort of proofread or upgrade
your skills rulebook. Use chat GPT to look for
potential logic flaws in your clog -built skill.
For example, it might spot that asking for a
trending background sound for TikTok is maybe
too vague. You know, what's trending changes
constantly. And the fix was straightforward.
Just update the rule. Instead of asking for the
trending sound, tell it to suggest a type of
music, maybe lo -fi or happy pop music, something
the AI can actually deliver consistently. So
this ability to just take the rulebook itself
and move it around. How does that fundamentally
change things for us as users? How does it loosen
the grip of being tied to just one AI tool? Well,
skills create these abilities that are truly
portable and reusable. It shifts the intelligence
or at least the specific operational rules away
from the underlying AI model and puts it into
your hands in a format you can share and control.
Reduces that platform dependency. So the big
question then is, when should you actually invest
the time to build one of these skills? The source
gave a pretty good rule of thumb. If a task is
important enough that you'd normally write up
a detailed training guide for a human, then yeah,
make it a skill. Makes sense. So that covers
things like recurring jobs, weekly reports, maybe.
Yeah. Complex projects like putting together
a strategic plan. And definitely anything with
really specific rules you have to follow. Brand
voice. legal disclaimers, data formatting, that
kind of stuff. We saw some great specific examples,
like a PowerPoint outline skill. It could be
built to always use the five by five rule, you
know, max five lines per slide, max five words
per line, and maybe enforce a standard 10 slide
structure every time, flawlessly. Or imagine
a basic Excel data analysis skill. It could be
trained to always follow a set process. First,
understand the data columns. Second, suggest
data cleaning steps. Third, run basic analysis
averages, medians, counts. And fourth, only present
the results using clear, formatted bullet points.
No rambling. Whoa. Okay, when you start thinking
about scaling that, the potential is pretty wild.
The source hints at a future where maybe there's
a marketplace. You could just download an expert
created financial analysis skill and instantly
plug that sophisticated system into whatever
AI tool you prefer. Right. So let's say you build
two foundational skills yourself. One for basic
SEO analysis, maybe, and another for generating
meeting summaries. What's the crucial difference
in the outcome you're demanding from each of
those skills? Ah, good question. The SEO skill
would be laser focused on output format, structure,
hitting keyword targets. Whereas the meeting
summary skill is all about accurately capturing
the final decisions made and critically the specific
action items, who needs to do what and by when.
Different goals, different rules. So wrapping
this up. What's the big takeaway here? This deep
dive really highlights a shift, doesn't it? Moving
from constantly being in prompt writing mode
to more of a proactive ability building mindset.
Yeah, exactly. Skills let you offload that heavy
lifting of explaining the context and the rules
every single time, which means your actual prompts
can become much shorter, much clearer. They just
trigger the detailed rule book you already built.
You're essentially building this library of reusable
systems based intelligence, making complex, often
repetitive professional to work feel simpler
and way more efficient. But it's not about stopping
prompting altogether, right? That's important.
You still need to tell the AI what the specific
job is for today. You provide the topic, the
raw input. But the how is already baked into
this skill. So if you start building this library
now, maybe just focus on creating one simple
skill this week for a task you repeat. Often
you'll likely be way ahead of the curve. ahead
of others still grinding out those long, complex
prompts from scratch every time. Yeah, absolutely.
So maybe the final thought to leave you with
is this. Think about one core part of your job
right now, something that relies heavily on repetition
and following specific rules. How quickly could
you automate the compliance part of that task,
perfectly, every time, with a single portable
skill?