Beginner's Guide · Claude Skills

Teach Claude what your brand sounds like.

A "Skill" is the simplest way to make Claude consistent. Once. Forever. Across every prompt, in every chat, by every teammate.

⏱ 8 min read 🎯 No coding required 📦 Sample skill included
SCROLL ↓
The problem

Same prompt. Different brand. Every time.

Without a Skill, every chat starts from zero. Claude is brilliant — but it doesn't know your brand. Three coworkers ask the same thing and get three different answers.

Coworker A · Monday 9:14am
"Write a LinkedIn post announcing our new feature."
"🚀 Excited to announce our revolutionary new feature that will transform the way teams work! Stay tuned…"
Coworker B · Monday 11:32am
"Write a LinkedIn post announcing our new feature."
"We're delighted to share that our latest innovation empowers users to leverage best-in-class workflows, seamlessly…"
Coworker C · Monday 2:08pm
"Write a LinkedIn post announcing our new feature."
"Hey friends 👋 Big news! Just dropped something that's going to change everything for your workflow…"

Three voices. Three audiences. One brand quietly drifting.

What's a Skill?

A folder Claude reads before it answers.

That's the whole concept. A Skill is a small folder of plain-text files. Claude opens it whenever the situation calls for it, reads the rules, then writes accordingly.

Think of a Skill as a sticky note Claude reads every time a certain kind of task comes up.

You define the rules once — voice, vocabulary, examples, do's and don'ts. Claude reads them every time someone on your team asks for that kind of work. No more "remember to make it sound like us." No more re-explaining the brand. Just consistent output, on request.

📌

The simplest analogy

You hire a sharp new copywriter. On day one, you hand them a one-page brand sheet: how we sound, what words to use, what to avoid, and a few examples of work we love. From then on, they write to that brief — automatically. A Skill is that brief, but for Claude.

The 3 ingredients

Every Skill has these three parts.

Don't worry — you don't write code. You write Markdown, which is just normal text with the occasional bold or list.

01

SKILL.md

The "front door." A short overview that tells Claude when this skill applies and what files to read for the details. Always required, always named exactly this.

📄 SKILL.md
02

Reference files

The "playbook." Detailed instructions, vocabulary lists, do/don't rules, brand pillars — anything Claude should consult while working. Name them whatever makes sense.

📄 brand-definition.md
03

Examples

The "show, don't tell." Real before/after rewrites, sample on-brand posts, or any case studies. This is the most important file — examples teach faster than rules.

📄 examples.md
Hands-on

Building a Brand Guide skill, in 4 steps.

You'll do this once. From then on, every "make this on-brand" request takes seconds.

1

Open Claude and type a slash

In any Claude chat, type a forward slash. A list of available commands appears, including /skill-creator — Claude's built-in helper for making new skills.

/ → skill-creator → Enter
2

Describe what you want in plain English

Tell Claude what kind of work the skill should help with. No formatting, no jargon — just talk to it like a colleague.

"I want a skill that helps me write copy that sounds like Aurora Labs — confident, concise, never corporate-speak."
3

Hand over your brand guide

Paste your existing brand voice doc, your style guide, or even a few examples of writing you love. Claude will structure it into the right format.

Paste your brand voice doc → Claude reorganizes it into voice axes, vocabulary lists, and examples
4

Test it on a real brief

Ask Claude to draft something — a LinkedIn post, an email subject, a hero headline. The skill activates automatically. Refine the rules until the output sounds like you.

"Write 3 LinkedIn post options announcing our new product." → on-brand drafts, every time
Inside the file

Here's the actual Brand Guide skill we built.

Click any file to peek inside. This isn't a mockup — it's the real skill, ready to clone.

brand-guide-skill/
📁 brand-guide
📄 SKILL.md
📄 brand-definition.md
📄 examples.md
The front door

SKILL.md

--- frontmatter Claude reads first ---
name: brand-guide
description: Use when writing any external or
internal copy that should sound like a specific
company's brand — marketing pages, social posts,
product descriptions, internal announcements,
customer emails, press releases, ad copy, blog
intros, or any draft someone needs to "make it
sound on-brand."
---

# Brand Guide

## Overview
A brand voice isn't decoration — it's a constraint
that makes communication recognizable and trustworthy.

This skill loads a defined brand's voice, tone,
vocabulary, and visual rules, then helps Claude
produce copy that consistently sounds like that brand.

## When to Use
- Marketing pages, landing pages, hero copy
- Social posts (LinkedIn, X, Instagram)
- Email campaigns, customer announcements
- Product descriptions, taglines
- Internal communications meant to model brand voice

## Workflow
1. Read brand-definition.md before drafting
2. Read examples.md when rewriting copy
3. Draft to the brand
4. Self-check before delivery
The playbook

brand-definition.md

# Brand Definition — Aurora Labs

## Voice Axes
The brand sits at a specific point on each spectrum.

| Axis              | Position       |
|-------------------|----------------|
| Formal ←→ Casual  | 70% casual     |
| Confident ←→ Tentative | 90% confident |
| Optimistic ←→ Realistic | 80% optimistic |
| Witty ←→ Serious  | 40% witty      |

## Vocabulary — Prefer
- ship, launch, deliver (over: deploy)
- craft (over: quality)
- make, build, draw (over: create, generate)
- clear, sharp, honest (over: intuitive)

## Vocabulary — Avoid
- ❌ leverage → use *use*
- ❌ utilize → use *use*
- ❌ synergy / best-in-class / world-class
- ❌ revolutionize / disrupt / transform
- ❌ delight / seamless / unleash

## Voice in One Sentence
Aurora Labs sounds like a sharp, confident colleague
who respects your time, picks the right verb the first
try, and would rather show you the work than describe it.
Show, don't tell

examples.md

# On-Brand Examples — Aurora Labs

## 1. Hero headline

❌ Before:
"Empower your creative team to leverage AI-driven
workflows for seamless delivery."

✅ After:
"Move from idea to shipped draft in an afternoon."

Why it changed: Banned vocabulary gone.
Concrete outcome replaces vague promise. Personal
verb (move) instead of institutional construction.

## 2. Social post (LinkedIn)

❌ Before:
"🚀 We're delighted to announce our revolutionary
new feature that will transform the way creative
teams work! Stay tuned!"

✅ After:
"New: stack 5 versions of a layout side-by-side
and ask Aurora which one is closest to the brief.
Saves the meeting where everyone says 'I don't know,
what do you think?'"

Why it changed: No banned words. Concrete
behavior described instead of feature claim. Ends
on a real, relatable creative-team pain.
The result

What the skill actually changes.

Same prompt — "Write a LinkedIn post for our new feature." Without the skill on the left. With the skill on the right.

✗ Without skill
Hero headline

"Empower your creative team to leverage AI-driven workflows for seamless delivery."

✓ With skill
Hero headline

"Move from idea to shipped draft in an afternoon."

✗ Without skill
Email subject line

"Discover the powerful new capabilities of our latest update!"

✓ With skill
Email subject line

"Three things that work better in Aurora this week"

✗ Without skill
Internal team announcement

"I'm thrilled to share that we're revolutionizing our workflow by leveraging Aurora's powerful new ideation engine to deliver best-in-class output at unprecedented scale!"

✓ With skill
Internal team announcement

"Quick heads-up: starting Monday, the brand team is using Aurora for first-draft social posts. We'll review the output the same way we review intern drafts — kindly, but ruthlessly."

✗ Without skill
Product CTA button

"Discover the Power of Aurora →"

✓ With skill
Product CTA button

"Try it on a real brief →"

Start now

Three steps. About 30 minutes.

You don't need a developer. You don't need to know what a YAML file is. You need a brand voice doc and Claude.

📋

Gather your raw material

Pull together what you already have: your brand voice doc, three examples of writing you love, your "do/don't" word list, your audience description. Even rough notes work.

⚙️

Run /skill-creator

In any Claude chat, type /skill-creator and tell it you want a brand guide skill. Paste your raw material. Claude organizes it into the standard skill format.

🚀

Test, refine, share

Ask Claude to draft a few real briefs. Tighten the skill where the output drifted. Share the skill folder with your team — every chat now writes on-brand.

Make Claude sound like you.

The Aurora Labs sample skill is open-source — clone it, swap in your brand, and you're live in an afternoon.

Get the sample skill → Talk to Digital Workforce