What a Skill Actually Is
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What a Skill Actually Is
A skill is a markdown file. That’s the whole thing. It lives in ~/.claude/skills/[name]/SKILL.md and contains whatever you want Claude to know or do when you invoke it.
The file has a YAML frontmatter block at the top:
---
name: my-skill
description: What this skill does and when to use it
user-invocable: true
---Below the frontmatter is the actual content — instructions, context, workflows, examples, whatever the skill needs. Claude reads it all when the skill is invoked.
When you type /my-skill in a Claude Code session, Claude reads the file and follows it. The skill might tell Claude to run a series of bash commands, check specific files, format output in a certain way, or apply a particular mental model before responding. You write the instructions once; Claude executes them every time.