Anthropic introduces Agent Skills

Background

Agent Skills is a way of packaging reusable know-how for Claude. Instead of repeating the same instructions in every conversation, a user or organisation can place them in a skill that Claude opens only when the work requires it.

What happened

On 16 October 2025 Anthropic introduced Agent Skills for Claude.^[1] A skill is a folder of instructions, scripts and resources. Claude loads it only when it is relevant to the task.^[1]

Skills use the same format across the Claude apps, Claude Code and the API.^[1]

Key details

Anthropic provided skills for Excel, PowerPoint, Word and fillable PDFs, along with a skill-creator skill for building new ones.^[1]

Because skills can execute code, Anthropic advised using them only from trusted sources.^[1]

Impact

On 18 December 2025 Agent Skills was published as an open standard.^[1]