Build Reusable Skills for Repeated Workflows

If you do something more than once a day, turn it into a skill. Skills are more powerful than slash commands because they auto-load based on context and can include scripts and resources.

Structure

.claude/skills/
  deploy/
    SKILL.md          # Instructions + metadata
    scripts/
      deploy.sh       # Supporting scripts
    resources/
      checklist.md    # Reference docs

SKILL.md Format

---
name: deploy
description: "Handles production deployment with pre-flight checks"
---

## Deploy Workflow

1. Run `scripts/deploy.sh --dry-run` first
2. Check all pre-flight conditions pass
3. If dry run succeeds, run `scripts/deploy.sh --production`
4. Verify deployment health at /api/health
5. Post deployment status to #deployments Slack channel

Key Features

• Auto-loading: Skills activate automatically when Claude detects relevant context, no need to invoke manually
• Live reload: Edit skills during a session and changes take effect immediately
• Prevent auto-invocation: Add disable-model-invocation: true to frontmatter if you only want manual triggering

Skill vs. Command vs. CLAUDE.md

Feature	CLAUDE.md	Skill	Command
Loaded	Always	On-demand	On invoke
Triggered by	-	Context match	User types /name
Includes scripts	No	Yes	No
Best for	Universal rules	Complex workflows	Simple templates

Tip

Share skills across your team by committing .claude/skills/ to git. Everyone gets the same workflows, and they evolve with the codebase.

Create a Claude Code skill in .claude/skills/ that handles our deployment workflow with a SKILL.md file.