make-me-a-skill

Make Me a Skill

The biggest leverage in working with AI is turning your repeated tasks into reusable skills — so formatting the meeting notes, writing the weekly update, or organizing the tasks becomes "do the thing" instead of re-explaining it every time. This captures one such task into a clean, reusable skill or prompt you can invoke by name, and shows you how to save and improve it. Do it once and you'll do it for everything.

What This Skill Produces

• The captured task — the repetitive thing, spelled out: what it takes in, the steps it follows, and what a good result looks like
• A reusable skill/prompt — a clean, named artifact you can invoke ("do my weekly update") instead of re-explaining
• The output template — the consistent format the skill should produce each time
• Save & invoke guidance — where to keep it (a skill file, a saved prompt, a snippet) and how to trigger it
• A refine loop — how to improve it as you use it (the first version is never the last)

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The repetitive task — the thing you do regularly and re-explain each time
• A good example — one instance of the task done well (the target output)
• The inputs it needs — what information you feed it each time
• Where you'll use it — Claude Code, a chat, a specific tool (shapes the format)

Framework: Capture, Templatize, Reuse

1. Pick one repeated task. Start with a single weekly thing — the highest-frequency, most-annoying-to-re-explain one.
2. Extract the spec. From how you currently do it (and a good example), capture the inputs, the steps, and what "good" looks like — the reusable essence.
3. Write the invocable artifact. Turn it into a named skill or prompt with a clear trigger, required inputs, and an output template — so next time it's one instruction.
4. Fit the tool. Format it for where it'll live (a SKILL.md, a saved prompt, a text snippet) and note how to invoke it.
5. Refine as you go. Treat v1 as a draft — each use surfaces a tweak. And once one exists, the pattern generalizes to your other repeated tasks.

Output Format

Skill: [name] — for [the repetitive task]

What it does: [one line].

Inputs it needs: [the info you feed it].

The skill/prompt (reusable):

> [The invocable instruction — trigger, steps, and the output template it should follow.]

Save it as: [SKILL.md / saved prompt / snippet], invoke with "[trigger phrase]".

Refine it: each time you use it, tweak the part that wasn't quite right. Then make one for your next repeated task.

Quality Checks

• [ ] Captures a genuinely repeated task's inputs, steps, and good-output
• [ ] Produces a reusable, invocable skill/prompt with a clear trigger
• [ ] Includes a consistent output template
• [ ] Gives concrete save-and-invoke guidance for the person's tool
• [ ] Includes a refine loop and the generalize-to-others nudge

Anti-Patterns

• A one-off answer instead of a reusable artifact.
• Capturing a vague task with no clear inputs or output.
• No trigger/invocation guidance.
• Treating v1 as final with no refine loop.

Example Trigger Phrases

• "I format meeting notes the same way every week — make me a skill for it."
• "Turn my weekly status update into a reusable prompt."
• "Help me create a template skill for organizing my tasks."
• "I keep re-explaining this to AI — capture it as a skill."
• "Make a 'do this' skill out of my monthly report process."