Claude's New Skill System is GENIUS!

skills might just replace your sub aents in claude code. Let's talk about anthropic skills. It's a zip file that you provide to claude desktop. You provide to claude code. The example they give is actually having a brand guidelines skill which whenever you mention something to do with brand guidelines inside of Claude it reference it knows to go and get that skill and within that you've given it obviously brand guidelines PDF there instructions files anything that it needs to just go do that thing so it's a really handy way to just again it's kind of clue is in the really it's a it's a skill. MCPs, sub aents, they all eat up lots of context and you run out of that context much more quickly when you're coding with claw code with a skill. If you give enough context, if you give enough information in the description of the skill, then you can in theory offset that because these don't take up any context. I honestly don't know why MCPs and weren't built like this in the first place. why you've constantly got to have MCPs running and eating up all that context. But it's really nice that yeah, you could have like a TypeScript skill or you could have a code formatting skill as an example and it just knows how to format your code. Again, in this example, they're talking about brand guidelines. You want to create something, you link this to Canva, and it's it's bringing all that in and whatever. So, it's a really cool technology that in theory, if done well, could replace sub aents and MCP servers. I mean, the easiest way to create it is literally just by going into Claude and saying, "Give me a skill to help with my brand guidelines or whatever." But yeah, you zip that up, you upload it, and jobs are good. In If I simplify this, is this essentially like a system prompt? Is this like a prompt that will be sent every time you request something? Depends how you look at a system prompt because yeah, I guess I guess in some way you can you can consider it a system prompt. Um, but it's it's kind of it's fetched on the fly. It's it's it's considered on the fly rather than being on the present, which again in the case of clawed code can eat up a lot of context. But if you have certain ways you want to do things, I saw a video that wants to write hooks. I think it was a hook generator. So he provided like an article or something and then it was like write a hook for this thing and it has a way that he likes to write his hooks. It's system it's systematization. It's repeatable processes that you can provide in a set of instructions and a set of uh whether it's a PDF or or file or some description. And it might even be a layout or a template, you know, something like that. So, yeah, if you squint a little bit, it's a system inevitably a system prompt, but I'm particularly excited about it just because again, it provides extra skills. It's an extra tool that doesn't eat up your context. If it's not used, then it's not going to take up your context. The problem with MCP is you might not use the MCP, but it's still there eating up your context. Yeah. Switching them on and off all the time. Like I even made a short yesterday saying I switch on and off the Figma MCP because I'm not always working on front end whereas I'll turn on the Figma MCP when I'm specifically working on front end. This is part of a larger conversation on my show Command AI which we stream live every single week. We discuss the news and all things related to AI in the world of design and web. Catch us next week and join in the banter.