About this video
Your AI prompts are likely a massive waste of time if you aren't turning them into permanent skills. In this video, I reveal how I use Anthropic's new skills framework to automate my entire content workflow, from Figma design systems to Notion databases. We look at the practical side of ClaudeCode, moving beyond the theory to show how these tools actually get work done. Key Takeaways: - Skills are the evolution of slash commands and act as a permanent source of truth for AI agents. - You can generate custom skills directly from Figma frames or HTML files to maintain perfect brand consistency. - Automation via cron jobs becomes much more powerful when paired with formatting skills. - Developers can override default AI behaviours, such as the 'init' command, to suit their personal coding standards. - Skills allow for seamless process sharing between team members and different projects.
Why Your AI Prompts are Probably a Massive Waste of Time
Most people are using AI entirely incorrectly by relying on one-off prompts that they have to copy and paste repeatedly. If you want to actually scale your productivity, you need to stop thinking about prompts and start thinking about skills.
The Evolution of AI Interaction
In the world of ClaudeCode and Anthropic, skills are the next logical step beyond simple commands. They are not just reusable snippets, they are living, breathing definitions of process and design that allow an AI to understand your specific brand, coding style, or workflow without being told twice.
How to Build Your First Skill
Building a skill is surprisingly simple. You can use the skill creator tool by running npx skills add skill-creator, which will guide you through a step-by-step interview process. Alternatively, if you are a designer, you can use the Figma MCP skill. By pointing Claude to a specific frame in Figma, it can infer your entire design system including colours, fonts, and spacing, then package that into a skill.
Practical Applications for Creators
I use skills for everything from animating video stings in Remotion to formatting research articles. For instance, I have a cron job that finds AI news and sends it to me. By using an 'article skill', I ensure that every piece of content added to my Notion database follows the exact same format: title, intro, talking points, and source link. This consistency is impossible to maintain manually at scale.
Overriding the Defaults
For the developers out there, skills even allow you to override default functions like init. I have created a skill that produces a much smaller, more refined Claude.md file and automatically symlinks it to an agent.md file. This ensures that no matter what project I am in, the environment is configured exactly to my liking.
The Bottom Line
Skills are the source of truth for your digital workflow. They allow you to define a process once and execute it perfectly every time. If you are not building a library of skills, you are simply working harder than you need to. Stop prompting and start building.