Anthropic Introduces Skills for Custom Claude Tasks

"The Skills feature spans Claude's web app, the Claude Code environment, and the API, giving organizations the ability to author custom Skills through a new /v1/skills endpoint, manage versions in the console, and integrate them into their workflows.When a Skill is not relevant to a user's request, Claude will bypass it, ensuring that only pertinent instructions and resources are loaded. Skills require the Code Execution Tool, which provides the secure environment they need to run."

"According to Anthropic, Skills are defined by a schema describing their inputs, outputs, and permissions. Once defined, they can be invoked dynamically through Claude's API, allowing seamless integration between the model and external systems. This architecture mirrors the function calling paradigm already adopted by OpenAI's GPT models and Microsoft's Copilot ecosystem, but Anthropic emphasizes a more transparent and auditable approach, aligning with its focus on model safety and interpretability."

"In practice, a developer could create a Skill to fetch structured data from a company database, compose personalized email responses using CRM data, summarize meeting transcripts in a specific format, or trigger actions in third-party applications such as Slack or Notion. Each Skill runs within clearly defined boundaries, ensuring Claude only accesses data and executes actions explicitly allowed by the developer. This fine-grained control could make the system more appealing to enterprises seeking both flexibility and compliance."

Skills enable developers to extend Claude with modular, reusable task components that Claude can call during conversations for tasks like summarization, API retrieval, or domain-specific computation. Skills operate across the web app, Claude Code environment, and the API, with authoring via a /v1/skills endpoint and version management in the console. A schema defines each Skill’s inputs, outputs, and permissions, and Skills invoke dynamically through the API. Skills require the Code Execution Tool to run in a secure environment. Claude bypasses irrelevant Skills to avoid loading unnecessary instructions. The design emphasizes fine-grained permissions, auditability, and enterprise-friendly safety and compliance.

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