Day 15 of 21
Skills — 37,000 free shortcuts waiting for you
Goal: Skills are pre-built instruction sets that give Claude Code instant expertise in specific tasks. Today you find them, install one, and use it in a real session.
What to do
Ask Claude Code about available Skills
Start Claude Code and type:
Show me what Skills are available and suggest three that would be useful for a non-developer building a website.Create a Launch Checklist Skill
Type this prompt to create your first Skill:
Create a Launch Checklist Skill that I can trigger with /launch-checklist. When triggered it should review my project and check: all pages load without errors, no placeholder text remains anywhere, all internal links point to real pages, every page has a unique title and meta description, images have alt text, the design looks consistent, and all forms have submit handling. Save this as a Skill file at .claude/skills/launch-checklist.mdRun /launch-checklist
Type:
/launch-checklistFix at least one item from the checklist
Pick the most important item from the /launch-checklist report. Use the 4-part formula to fix it. Run /launch-checklist again to confirm the fix.
Confirm the Skill file exists
Open your project in a file browser (Finder on Mac, File Explorer on Windows). Navigate to the .claude/skills/ folder. Confirm launch-checklist.md is there.
Expected result
You have a Launch Checklist Skill installed. One command triggers an expert review of your project. You fixed at least one issue it found.
Key takeaway
- A Skill is a pre-written instruction file stored in .claude/skills/. Install one with a prompt, call it with a slash command. One command replaces a long prompt you would otherwise write every time.