Skills Overview

50+ specialized skills for development workflows, testing, security, and architecture

Everything Claude Code comes with 50+ pre-built skills that provide specialized workflows, patterns, and best practices for common development tasks.

What are Skills?

Skills are reusable workflow definitions that guide Claude through specific development tasks. Unlike agents (which are autonomous) or commands (which are single actions), skills provide step-by-step guidance for complex workflows.

Skill Categories

Development Workflows

Core development patterns and methodologies:

• TDD Workflow - Test-driven development with 80%+ coverage
• Verification Loop - Comprehensive quality gates before PR
• Eval Harness - Eval-driven development framework
• Coding Standards - Universal best practices for TypeScript/JavaScript

Security & Quality

Security-first development and code review:

• Security Review - Comprehensive security checklist
• Security Scan - AgentShield configuration auditing

Architecture & Design

API design and system architecture patterns:

• API Design - REST API conventions and best practices
• Frontend Patterns - React, Next.js, state management
• Backend Patterns - Repository pattern, caching, middleware

Testing

Comprehensive testing strategies:

• E2E Testing - Playwright patterns and Page Object Model

Data Layer

Database and migration patterns:

• Database Migrations - Safe schema changes and zero-downtime deployments

Language-Specific Patterns

Idiomatic patterns for different languages:

Go

• Go Patterns - Idiomatic Go development
• Go Testing - Table-driven tests, benchmarks, fuzzing

Python

• Python Patterns - Pythonic idioms and best practices
• Django Patterns - Django REST Framework and ORM patterns

C++

• C++ Coding Standards - C++ Core Guidelines compliance

Meta-Skills

Learning and optimization:

• Continuous Learning - Instinct-based learning system
• Strategic Compact - Context management strategy
• Iterative Retrieval - Progressive context refinement

How to Use Skills

Skills are automatically available to Claude when the skill loader is configured. You can:

1. Activate implicitly - Claude recognizes when a skill applies to your request
2. Request explicitly - “Use the TDD workflow skill for this feature”
3. Reference in CLAUDE.md - Add skill guidelines to project instructions

Skill Activation Triggers

Each skill defines when it should activate:

## When to Activate
- Writing new features or functionality
- Fixing bugs or issues
- Refactoring existing code

Creating Custom Skills

You can create project-specific skills in .claude/skills/:

---
name: my-custom-skill
description: Custom workflow for our project
origin: Project
---

# My Custom Skill

## When to Activate
- Specific to our project needs

## Workflow Steps
1. Step one
2. Step two

Skill vs Agent vs Command

Type	Purpose	Example
Skill	Multi-step workflow guidance	TDD Workflow (write tests → implement → refactor)
Agent	Autonomous task execution	Build Error Resolver (analyzes errors, fixes them)
Command	Single action	/verify (runs verification checks)

Next Steps

Explore individual skills:

• Start with TDD Workflow for test-driven development
• Review Security Review before production deployments
• Check Coding Standards for code quality guidelines