Set Up Claude Skills in 21 Mins (for Non-Technical People)

0:00 This is the beginner's guide to actually setting up cloud skills. I'm going to make it super easy for you to understand how to use it, why it's important. I'll start by why it's important. You will be able to get way more out of cloud if you use skills. It's just going to get way more consistent, higher value stops. So who doesn't want that? This episode is for you.

0:22 And it's for the beginner. I'm not going to be using cloud code. I'm just going to be using a website or if you want to just have the Mac app, we're going to talk about how you can create a custom skill. So the first thing you're going to want to do is actually enable skills. So it doesn't enable it by default. So if you go to settings and then you click capabilities, if you scroll down, you actually could see that there's the skills preview feature.

0:55 Repeat customizable instructions that Cloud can follow in any chat and you can actually add them over here. If you want to create a new skill, it gives you three options. It says, create with cloud, build complex skills through conversation, write skill instructions, great for skills that are easy to describe, and then upload a skill. So this is if you actually have a zip already or a skill, you can just upload it already. But for the vast majority of people, you actually want to just hit, you know, let's create a skill together and says, it basically onboards you to this idea of how to create a skill. So it says, let's create a skill together using your skill creator skill. First, ask me what the skill should do. It says, I'll help

1:39 you create a custom skill. Let me first review the skill creator documentation to guide us through this process. So then it says, perfect. Let's create a custom skill. What functionality should this skill provide? For example, it could help with working with the specific formats or data. Following particular workloads for workflows for your work or projects, integrating with specific tools or APIs, applying domain specific knowledge or procedures or something else entirely. So what do I have in mind? So that's a good question. I'm going to say, hey there, I run a design agency called LCA. I'm constantly creating new apps and websites.

2:24 I'd love a skill that reviewed my designs. Actually, we reviewed my viewed my copywriting on my apps and websites and and critiqued it to get the highest conversion rate possible. Basically, I want to ship apps that drive revenue, etc. and copy helps do that. So basically what I'm trying to do is I want to have almost like a copywriter that specializes for apps and websites. And I want to see if I can create a skill that can go and do that. And it says, great idea. A conversion focused copywriting review skill would be really valuable for your agency. Let me ask you a few questions to understand exactly how you do this.

3:26 What kind of apps are in websites that you're typically building? So I'm going to say, I'm typically building mobile apps that have AI embedded in it. Or SAS. Number two, how would you provide the copy for review? Would you share URLs, HTML files, screenshots? I'm going to say I would share screenshots or Figma files or just paste text, whatever is easiest for you. So I literally treat it like, you know, I'm talking to an employee. What specific elements do you want critiqued?

4:17 Headlines, CTAs, value proposition, product descriptions, hero sections, pricing pages, onboarding foes, all the above, all the above. And what does a helpful review look like to you? Do you want specific suggestions with before and after, a score assessment, prioritize, issues to fix or something else? Actually, that all sounds great.

4:39 If you have a business that's doing at least $50,000 a month in revenue, I've got something interesting for you. It's called offline mode. It's a two day event that me and my team are putting on at a 20,000 plus foot square foot mansion. Yes, this is what it looks like on January 23rd and January 24th and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I'll include a link in the description if you're interested in coming. But it's basically for people who have a business that's kind of cranking, but they really want to put it in rocket chip mode. They want to create a set of businesses that generate tons of money, tons of cash flow, tons of product market fit, tons of impact. But they're not just quite there yet. It's also about making your business AI first, how you can actually build

5:26 not just one product, but multiple products. And you're going to leave with tactical answers to your questions. So if that's you and this sounds interesting, I'll see you there. So you answer it and it's actually a really good, before you create, I mean, you should create your first skill, but I think that you should be asking Claude, telling what you do and giving and asking it to tell you what are the 10 skills that you should be creating.

6:01 So this would just be one of the skills. So you can see here, it says, I have a clear picture now. I'm creating a conversion copywriting review skill for your AI and SAS mobile apps. I'll build a skill that reviews all copy elements, headline, CTAs, value props, provide score assessments with specific before and after suggestions, prioritize issues by impact on conversion, works with screenshots, Figma, files, and pace of text.

6:26 Let me start by setting up the skill structure. And it's gone and it's building out, building this out. So why this is so important is, yes, you could obviously have this within Claude in like one chat, but you lose the context. With the skill, you're getting the consistency and you're just getting better output ultimately because you're getting consistent output that you want. You're giving it the right amount of context and now knows about my business.

7:00 A common question is, well, why wouldn't I just use a project within Claude? Well, you could use a project, but projects are context specific for a specific, there's a beginning, middle, and an ending date to the project. So for example, maybe you're working on a Christmas campaign, but after that, the type of copy that you would do for Christmas campaign might be different if you're doing something for Valentine's Day. So I think think of skills as you're building like your team a little bit and you need a set of skills that are going to work regardless if you're working on a campaign or if you're working on just, it's sort of like your day to day operations. So let's just check in on what's happening here. It says it's building the skill.

7:55 It's starting by setting up the skill structure. Now let me build out the skill with conversion and cooperating expertise. I'll remove the example files we don't need and create reference materials. Great. And now it says now, let me, let me write the main skill MD with the review workflow. So it's, you know, these are markdownfiles.md, which is really simple. And I saw, I think someone from from Anthropic actually, you know, someone asked them, hey, like, why did you do markdown files? Like that's like literally the most basic files ever. Like, why didn't you do something a little, a little, you know, more complex? And they just said that like it works, right?

8:42 Files work, markdown files are super easy to understand. If you're non-technical, obviously, you can really understand it. So I'm happy that they, that they, you know, pick such an easy way to actually, to get involved. So you can see here now it's sort of at work. You can, you can actually go and see what it's doing. So, you know, it's, it's, you know, key principles, quality standards.

9:10 I mean, this is really insane, you know, like that, that, that this is possible. And, and, and it's gone. And, and I think it's, I think we've got it. So it says, hey, I've created your LCA conversion copy review skill. Here's what it includes. Provide expert conversion copywriting reviews for your AI power mobile apps in SAS. It works with screenshots, exactly what we said. So um, it says what's inside? Okay. So it's got the markdown file skill.md, which is the step-by-step review workflow with scoring system and output template. It's got a conversion framework.md. So it's got the core frameworks like i8a. Uh, I think that's attention, interest, desire, and action, pa, pa s, b a b. These are different frameworks that I'm happy exist in here and value proposition

10:01 formulas, like any good copywriter knows those things, element guidelines on md. So it's specific best practices for every copy element, headlines, calls to action, pricings, etc. Um, so how it works? When you ask me to review copy, I'll automatically load the conversion frameworks and guidelines, analyze each element with specific scoring, prioritize fixes by conversion impact, critical high medium low, and provide before and after examples with psychological rationale. And then says to use this, upload this dot skill file to clode, then just share any app website and ask for conversion review. So, uh, we're going to go ahead and do that. I'm actually going to go download it.

10:51 Um, download it here, copy, I click copy to your skills. So I believe we need to go back to the settings. We're going to go ahead and click settings. And then we go back to capabilities. And here, uh, you can see the skills, we have to add the skills. And now is when we upload the skills. So we're going to go ahead and drag and drop that from downloads. Um, so actually when I click copy, it put it in there. I wasn't sure about that. Um, so you actually, you know, if you click copy, it automatically puts it there, but I've gone and uploaded it there again.

11:28 And let's go and start a new chat and see if this works. So I mean, we're going to need something for it to review. So I'm actually just going to go to like, let's say Cal AI, which is a popular app for tracking your calories. I'm just going to, you know, screenshot this. Actually, maybe I'll screenshot. Yeah, I'm going to screenshot these app store previews. I'm going to go back.

11:59 So I'm going to say, hi, please use the conversion review skill to look at these app store screenshots and provide better copy. Actually, I'm also going to give it the website. I'm literally just going to copy and paste. I've also included the website copy, which needs a copy review as well. So I'm going to go and see if this actually uses the skill. Hopefully it does. So it says, I'll review your app store screenshots and website copy for conversion optimization. Let me start by examining the conversion copywriting best practice for your app. So now you can see the agent really is going and working with the skill to get to give the best possible outcome. Think about if we didn't have the skill. If we

12:59 didn't have the skill and you're like, make it better, you know, make it sound fresh, make it sound clean, make a conversion rate optimize. You just wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't get the best output. So here, let's see what happens. Cali i's current copy relies heavily on generic AI messaging without explaining concrete benefits or differentiated for competitors. The app store screenshots use vague headlines and don't communicate the value proposition. While the website copy berries, compelling features under technical descriptions, top priorities, rewrite headlines to focus on specific outcomes, clarify the unique AI capability depth sensor for volume calculation and lead with transformation rather than features. So it goes and tells you the critical issues. It says

13:48 the app store screenshots and let's actually go and let's look at the app store screenshots. So it says make easy calorie tracking easy with AI. Just snap a picture of your food. Then let us do the rest. You can see it's taking a picture of pancakes and then it says track your progress as you go. Protein carbs and fats. So it says the issues is too generic. Every calorie tracker claims to be easy. There's no specific benefit or differentiation. Then let us do the rest is nothing meaningful. So then it gives these alternatives. Option one, track calories in three seconds. I actually like the three seconds. I think that's really good. Oh, it did include by the way that the score. It's pretty harsh. Three on 10. But yeah, track calories in three seconds. No manual logging. Get exact

14:42 portions using iPhone depth sensing. It's obviously better. Why it works. Specific time frame. Three seconds emphasizes the elimination of friction points. Users hate highlights unique capability includes concrete multiplier. I've written copy for some of the largest SaaS businesses apps on the planet and I cannot agree more with this statement. Option two, so it gives you another option where it's transformation focus. Lost 17 pounds without counting a single calorie. Your camera calculates everything instantly. See calories protein carbs in real time. Join 5 million users hitting their goals daily. So leading with success, I think that could be really cool too.

15:27 Let's see how it did on the website copy. So the current copy says meat, cala, AI, track your calories with just a picture. It has a lot of issues with it. It says it weighs precious headline space. No emotional hook. The recommended alternative is the only calorie tracker that actually knows portion sizes. Your iPhone depth sensor measures exact food volume.

15:53 And it gives you the high priority improvements. You can just see this on screen. But the point here is it's done an incredible job here. It goes into medium priority refinements. It says what's working well here. It gives you product considerations and then a summary of what to do. Now this this is awesome. But I saw a tweet from my my friend boring marketer this morning and he said something that's really smart around how you can get the most out of cloud skills. So he said the trick to creating effective skills to make your AI think like an expert not just to follow steps.

16:38 So he has a 10 step process that I think you know is really great. So we've gone ahead and great. Now anyone listening to this can create a cloud skill. But how do you actually make the skill 2x better, 3x better, 4x better, 5x better? You do something like this and if people want I can go and do an episode with James the boring marketer where we can actually go deeper on this.

17:03 Understand what skill, what problem. Step one. So we did that but could we have gotten deeper with the LLM probably. Explore see where cloud fails without guidance. Step three, research, go deep on the domain. Step four, synthesize, extract principles from research. Step five, draft, write initial skill. Step six, self critique, review gains quality criteria.

17:33 Step seven, iterate, fix gaps, get feedback, improve. Step eight, test, use skill on a real scenario. Step nine, finalize, codify into an optimal structure. What does this mean? It says make cloud think like an expert, not follow steps. Produce output, not intermediate documents, sounds like a practitioner, not documentation. Constrain ruthlessly every section earns this place.

18:00 The point here is that once you've created your first skill or your second skill or your third skill, skills aren't something that you aren't making better over time. So as you see the output, let's say I didn't like the output of what I got, I can go ahead and edit the skill. Now that I have it, I can just go and edit it and add to it and change it and iterate from there.

18:24 So I want to keep this episode short. Today was just about how you can create your first few skills. And but once you have that, the second step is iterating on those skills so that it really really, it's like an employee that knows you. You don't even need to tell it what to do, right? That's what you want to get to, that it's just constantly delighting. And that's step two, you're iterating on the skills, getting the most out of them. And then step three is using it within a platform like Cloud Code. We've shown today around just using it on the web, on the Mac app, but you could use it within the terminal. And that's really where you're going to get the most amount of control in it. So hope this was helpful. I do these practical AI tutorials

19:22 because I think that we have a lot of ideas, and this is the startup ideas podcast, and it's about how you can get those ideas out of your head and actually create something that people love. And I think a big part of that is using things like skills to your advantage. So hope this was helpful. Please like, comment, and subscribe. I literally read every single comment and respond to most. So hope this was helpful. Happy holidays, and have a creative day.