Claude Skills Examples - 19 Real Agent Skills Explained

This is a library of real Claude Skills examples - 19 working agent skills with their full SKILL.md files, scripts, and resources explained page by page. Every entry originates from the official anthropics/skills repository (MIT licensed), so what you study here is what actually ships: document skills like Docx, PDF, Pptx, and Xlsx; builder skills like MCP Builder and Web Artifacts Builder; and design skills like Brand Guidelines and Theme Factory.

If you are new to Claude Skills, start with the concepts primer below, then open any example - or grab the skill template to build your own.

Skills

Skills are folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude loads dynamically to improve performance on specialized tasks. Skills teach Claude how to complete specific jobs in a repeatable way, whether that's creating documents with your company's brand guidelines, analyzing data using your organization's specific workflows, or automating personal tasks.

Further Reading

• What are skills?
• Using skills in Claude
• How to create custom skills
• Equipping agents for the real world with Agent Skills

About This Repository

The repository contains example skills that demonstrate what's possible with Claude's skills ecosystem. These examples range from creative applications (art, music, design) to technical tasks (testing web apps, MCP server generation) to enterprise workflows (communications, branding, etc.).

Each skill is self-contained in its own directory with a SKILL.md file containing the instructions and metadata that Claude uses. Browse through these examples to get inspiration for your own skills or to understand different patterns and approaches.

The example skills in this repo are open source (Apache 2.0). Anthropic has also included the document creation and editing skills that power Claude's document capabilities under the hood in the document-skills/ folder. These are source-available, not open source, but serve as a reference for more complex skills actively used in production.

Example Skills

This repository includes a diverse collection of example skills demonstrating different capabilities:

Creative & Design

• algorithmic-art: Create generative art using p5.js with seeded randomness, flow fields, and particle systems
• canvas-design: Design visual art in .png and .pdf formats using design philosophies
• frontend-design: Transform UI requirements into production-ready frontend code with bold, accessible layouts
• slack-gif-creator: Create animated GIFs optimized for Slack's size constraints

Development & Technical

• artifacts-builder: Build complex claude.ai HTML artifacts using React, Tailwind CSS, and shadcn/ui components
• mcp-builder: Guide for creating high-quality MCP servers to integrate external APIs and services
• webapp-testing: Test local web applications using Playwright for UI verification and debugging

Enterprise & Communication

• brand-guidelines: Apply Anthropic's official brand colors and typography to artifacts
• internal-comms: Write internal communications like status reports, newsletters, and FAQs
• theme-factory: Style artifacts with 10 pre-set professional themes or generate custom themes on the fly

Meta Skills

• skill-creator: Guide for creating effective skills that extend Claude's capabilities
• template-skill: A basic template to use as a starting point for new skills

Document Skills

The document-skills/ subdirectory contains skills that Anthropic developed to help Claude create various document file formats. These skills demonstrate advanced patterns for working with complex file formats and binary data:

• docx: Create, edit, and analyze Word documents with support for tracked changes, comments, formatting preservation, and text extraction
• pdf: Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables, creating new PDFs, merging/splitting documents, and handling forms
• pptx: Create, edit, and analyze PowerPoint presentations with support for layouts, templates, charts, and automated slide generation
• xlsx: Create, edit, and analyze Excel spreadsheets with support for formulas, formatting, data analysis, and visualization
• doc-coauthoring: Collaborate on document revisions with review-ready notes, edits, and structured feedback

Try in Claude Code, Claude.ai, and the API

Claude Code

You can register this repository as a Claude Code Plugin marketplace by running the following command in Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills

After installing the plugin, you can use the skill by just mentioning it. For instance, if you install the document-skills plugin from the marketplace, you can ask Claude Code to do something like: "use the pdf skill to extract the form fields from path/to/some-file.pdf".

Claude.ai

These example skills are already available to paid plans in Claude.ai. To use any skill from this repository or upload custom skills, follow the instructions in Using skills in Claude.

Claude API

You can use Anthropic's pre-built skills, and upload custom skills, via the Claude API. See the Skills API Quickstart for more.

Creating a Basic Skill

Skills are simple to create: just a folder with a SKILL.md file containing YAML frontmatter and instructions. You can use the template-skill in this repository as a starting point:

---
name: my-skill-name
description: A clear description of what this skill does and when to use it
---

# My Skill Name

[Add your instructions here that Claude will follow when this skill is active]

## Examples
- Example usage 1
- Example usage 2

## Guidelines
- Guideline 1
- Guideline 2

The frontmatter requires only two fields:

• name: A unique identifier for your skill (lowercase, hyphens for spaces)
• description: A complete description of what the skill does and when to use it

The markdown content below contains the instructions, examples, and guidelines that Claude will follow. For more details, see How to create custom skills.

Partner Skills

Skills are an effective way to teach Claude how to get better at using specific software. As Anthropic sees notable examples from partners, they may highlight them here:

• Notion: Notion Skills for Claude