Claude Skills: How to use them, why they are important & what they are.

Skills are the fix for most of your problems using AI tools. And right now they're one of the most powerful and most underused features in the entire Claude ecosystem.In this episode of In The Loop, I'm going deep on Claude Skills: the context engineering principle underneath them, the exact anatomy of a skill file, how to build your first one from scratch, how skills chain together into full workflows, and how they sit alongside MCPs and plugins. Plus.....a real walkthrough of a developer who's built a four-skill chain that goes from rough idea all the way to a kanban board of implementation tasks & how this relates to every knowledge workers day-to-day task. The shift happening right now isn't just about prompting better. It's about moving from using AI as a conversation to using AI as a library of reliable, repeatable capabilities. Skills are how you get there.⏭️ Episode highlights(01:40) – The context window problem that created skills(07:20) – Building your first skill, step by step with a real example(13:55) – Skill chaining: a four-skill workflow from idea to implementation(17:20) – Where to find community skills and the difference between skills, MCPs, and plugins(19:55) – Compound interest for your AI process🔗 Links & resourcesAnthropic's blog post: "Equipping agents for the real world with Agent Skills"Claude Code skills documentationAgent skills open standardAnthropic's official skills GitHub repoClaude help centre: using skillsMatt Pocock's skills repoIf you enjoyed this episode, rate, follow, and share. It helps others stay ahead of the latest AI trends.🤝 We're socialStay in the loop, even when you're not listening to this podcast.Jack HoughtonLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-houghton1/TikTok - @jackschatsMindset AI website - https://bit.ly/40lJr6BNewsletter - https://bit.ly/ITLnewsletterMindset AILinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/mindset-ai/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@GetMindsetAITikTok - @get.mindset.ai