How to Create a Claude Skill: Write Your First SKILL.md
From your first SKILL.md to naming conventions and trigger tuning — 6 real Skills for the whole journey
Deep Skill Finder
You've probably hit these walls
I keep re-explaining the same background — database schema, report format, tone rules — every single session. By the fifth time I realized this should be a skill.
source: Reddit · r/ClaudeAI
My first skill never loaded. Three retries later I found it: I named the file skill.md. Case matters. Ask me how I know.
source: X · indie hacker
Dropped a folder of files into the chat and Claude treated them as reference material, not as a skill. The difference is a SKILL.md — nobody tells you that upfront.
source: GitHub · skills discussions
Real voices scattered across Reddit / Hacker News / X / dev forums — stitched together, this is what people go through when doing "creating Claude Skills".
Lazy path · recommended
Install deep-skill-finder once — let your Agent find Skills for you
Whatever "creating Claude Skills" task you have, MEYO already has the matching Skills. You don't need to hunt one by one — install deep-skill-finder and your Agent will auto-search MEYO's 50,000+ Skill library on every task, recommending the best match. You just say what you want to do — matching Skills is the Agent's job.
Copy → paste into Claude Code / Codex / Cursor / WorkBuddy / CatPaw · Agent installs automatically:
Please install the deep-skill-finder skill: download the archive from https://www.meyo.life/skill-finder, extract it into your local skill directory and enable it.
Or browse common-scene Skills below. Learn more about deep-skill-finder → meyo.life/skill
Three scenes, 2 real Skills each
Install them all, or just pick 1–2 by name. Don't worry about picking wrong — they're free, uninstall anytime.
Your First Skill
What a skill folder looks like — follow along and ship it
For anyone writing SKILL.md for the first time
skill-creator-2
TOP 1
Create skills through conversation
Interviews you about the workflow you want to capture and generates a compliant SKILL.md skeleton as you chat
12990+ users
Guided first-skill walkthrough
Steps through folder layout, frontmatter and body structure so your first skill passes every convention check
863 users
💬 Join the Deep Skill Finder Community
Trade "creating Claude Skills" workflows with other Deep Skill Finder users and get install help
FAQ
Q: Can I name the file skill.md in lowercase?
A: No. SKILL.md must be exactly that — case-sensitive. Also keep the folder name in kebab-case (lowercase letters, digits, hyphens) and make the frontmatter name match the folder. All three must line up or the skill gets ignored.
Q: How does a skill get triggered after install?
A: The agent decides automatically by matching conversation intent against the skill's description; you can also invoke it by name manually. If it never fires, the description is usually too vague.
Q: Do I need to know how to code?
A: No. SKILL.md is fundamentally a structured Markdown document. Only advanced skills with script tools need a little code — and even that, the agent can help generate during the conversation.
Q: How much does the description field matter?
A: It's the routing information that lives permanently in context — the agent reads it to decide when to load your skill. Two or three crisp sentences on 'what it does and when to use it' beat a feature list every time.
Q: Skill vs CLAUDE.md — what's the difference?
A: CLAUDE.md is always-on project context loaded into every session; a skill loads on demand for a specific workflow. Put standing conventions in CLAUDE.md and reusable task flows in skills.
Q: How do I share a skill once it's done?
A: Zip the folder and drop it into someone else's skills directory, or publish it to a community registry — publish-style skills handle the packaging and metadata for you.