What are skills?

Claude Code introduces "skills" as a solution to the repetitive task of re-explaining coding standards, PR review structures, and commit message formats to AI agents. These markdown files function as specialized instruction sets that Claude automatically discovers and applies by matching a user's request against the skill's description. Developers can store personal preferences in a global home directory or embed team-wide standards directly within a repository to ensure consistency for everyone who clones the project. Unlike global configuration files that consume the entire context window or slash commands that require manual activation, skills load on demand only when relevant to the specific task. This architecture optimizes efficiency for specialized knowledge, such as brand guidelines or documentation formats, allowing the AI to execute complex workflows with precision without requiring constant manual prompting.