The starter skills
worth installing first
The beginner course taught you what a Skill is: a folder of instructions that Claude loads only when the job comes up, so your standing rules do not clutter every conversation. This chapter is the next step. Before you build your own, there is a small set of official skills worth turning on, because they cover jobs you already do and they come already made and maintained by the people who make the tool.
The reason to start here rather than build immediately is simple. You learn what a good skill feels like by using a few well-made ones first. And the official set covers a lot of ordinary work straight out of the box. Turning them on is a five-minute job and it changes what Claude can quietly do for you from that point on.
These are the official skills worth enabling first. Each one takes over a recurring job you would otherwise do by hand, and each is made and kept current by Anthropic, so you are not trusting a stranger's code.
You do not have to use all of them today. The point is to have the shelf stocked with vetted tools, so that when a job comes up, the right skill is already there and already trusted. Notice the pattern in the list: each one maps to a later chapter of this course. The skill maker feeds the next chapter, the connector builder feeds the automation part, the design helpers feed the anti-slop chapter. Turning them on now means the tools are ready when you arrive.
Enabling a skill is done in the app, not the terminal. You do not need any technical setup for this chapter. The path is in your settings, under the section for capabilities, where you switch on the ability to run code and create files, and then toggle the individual skills you want. That is the whole operation.
Here is a prompt that gets Claude to walk you through the current path for your exact plan and platform, since menus move around and this course refuses to print steps that go stale.
You will quickly discover there is a whole ecosystem of skills people share, and some of them are genuinely good. This course does not send you there yet, and the reason is not snobbery. A skill can contain code that runs on your behalf, with your access. A well-made one from a source you trust is a gift. One from a stranger is you agreeing to run code you have not read, with your files and your permissions, on the promise of a description.
At this tier the rule is plain: official skills, and the ones you build yourself, which is the next chapter. The wider ecosystem is real and worth knowing exists. But you install from it the way you would run any stranger's program on your machine, which is carefully, having actually looked, and once you have the judgment to tell a safe one from a risky one. That judgment is what this whole part of the course is building.
Open your settings and turn on code execution and file creation, then enable the official document skills, the skill-creating skill, and the design skills. Use the prompt above if the menu path is not obvious. Then prove one works: ask Claude to make a real spreadsheet or a short slide deck about something from your actual work, and download the file it produces.
Show the worked solution
- Before building your own skills, turn on the official set: the document skills, the skill maker, the connector builder, and the design helpers.
- Each starter skill maps to a later chapter, so enabling them now means the right tool is ready and trusted when you arrive at the job.
- Enabling is an in-app settings job, no terminal: switch on code execution and file creation, then toggle the individual skills.
- Skills from strangers can run code with your access. At this tier the rule is official and self-built only, and you earn your way outward as your judgment grows.
- A curated shelf of vetted tools, each one you chose and trust, beats both doing everything by hand and installing everything you find.
Turn on the official starter skills for your account now, and make one real file to prove a skill works. You have the vetted tools in place. Next chapter you stop being only a user of skills and build one of your own, end to end, the way you would want a recurring job done every time.
The fastest way to trust your own judgment about skills later is to spend time with well-made ones first. Start on the official shelf. Build your own next. Walk into the wider ecosystem only once you can tell a gift from a gamble.