Claude Code Skills: Automate Your Workflow with Custom Commands

Deploy steps, PR review checklists, security audits — explaining these procedures to Claude Code every time is tedious. With skills, you can save those instructions in a file and invoke them as slash commands like /deploy or /pr-check. Define them once, pass arguments as needed, and commit .claude/skills/ to your repo so the whole team shares the same workflows.

Extend Claude with skills - Claude Code Docs

Create, manage, and share skills to extend Claude's capabilities in Claude Code. Includes custom com...

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What Are Skills?

Skills are custom slash commands you can register in Claude Code. Create a .claude/skills/{skill-name}/SKILL.md file and it becomes available as /{skill-name}.

A skill file contains instructions written in Markdown. Claude Code reads the file and follows the instructions to carry out the task. Once defined, a skill can be reused as many times as you like, and committing it to your repository makes it available to everyone on your team.

Item	Details
Location (Project)	.claude/skills/{skill-name}/SKILL.md
Location (Personal)	~/.claude/skills/{skill-name}/SKILL.md
How to invoke	/{skill-name}
Arguments	Pass after the command, separated by spaces

Creating a Skill File

A skill file is a Markdown file with a frontmatter section and a body. The frontmatter includes name and description.

---
name: deploy
description: Deploy to the staging environment
---

# Deploy Steps

Deploy to the staging environment using the following steps.

1. Run the test suite and confirm all tests pass
2. Push to remote with `git push origin main`
3. Run the deploy script
4. Verify the deployment

The description is used in the skill list and helps Claude Code understand when to use the skill. Write something that clearly describes what the skill does.

The body contains the instructions in plain language or Markdown. Claude Code receives this as a prompt and works through it step by step.

Invoking Skills and Passing Arguments

Type /{skill-name} in the Claude Code chat to run a skill. Add arguments after a space to pass them along.

/deploy staging

Inside the skill file, use the $ARGUMENTS placeholder to receive whatever was passed. Document how arguments are used in the instructions so Claude Code interprets them correctly.

You can also describe what to do when no arguments are provided — for example, "if no argument is given, ask the user" — so the skill handles missing input gracefully instead of stopping.

Automatic Skill Invocation

Claude Code always keeps an eye on each skill's description. When the conversation matches a skill's description, Claude Code loads that skill automatically, without you having to invoke it explicitly.

For example, if you write description: Review a pull request, Claude Code will automatically apply that skill's instructions when you say something like "review this branch." By defining different checklists or review criteria per skill, your project-specific workflows get applied naturally during conversation.

Disabling Automatic Invocation

For tasks like deployments or production operations where accidental execution would be a problem, add disable-model-invocation: true to the frontmatter. This prevents Claude Code from loading the skill automatically — it will only run when you type /deploy explicitly.

---
name: deploy
description: Deploy to the staging environment
disable-model-invocation: true
---

Any skill with side effects is a good candidate for this setting, keeping Claude Code from triggering it based on context alone.

Use Cases

Use case	Skill example	Description
Deployment	/deploy	Package deploy steps so the same procedure runs every time
PR review	/pr-check	Define security, performance, and style criteria for consistent reviews
Security audit	/security-check	Register a security checklist to avoid missing anything
Infrastructure	/launch-ec2	Save EC2 start/stop procedures and specify the environment via arguments
Commit messages	/commit	Define commit message conventions to generate consistent messages

Example Skill

Here's a concrete example using a PR review skill. Create .claude/skills/pr-check/SKILL.md as follows.

---
name: pr-check
description: Review a pull request
---

# PR Review

Review the pull request from the following perspectives.

## Security
- Check for SQL injection, XSS, and other vulnerabilities
- Verify that authentication and authorization are handled correctly
- Confirm no secrets or credentials are included in the code

## Performance
- Look for N+1 query issues
- Identify unnecessary loops or duplicate processing

## Coding Standards
- Check that naming follows the project conventions
- Confirm tests are written
- Verify that comments are appropriate

Branch to review: $ARGUMENTS

Invoke the skill by passing a branch name as the argument. Claude Code expands $ARGUMENTS to the branch name and reviews the changes against the criteria above.

/pr-check feature/add-login

Summary

• Skills are custom slash commands created by adding a SKILL.md to a project or personal directory
• Write the name and description in frontmatter, and the instructions in the Markdown body
• Invoke manually with a slash command and pass arguments to make skills reusable
• Claude Code automatically loads a skill when the conversation matches its description
• Use disable-model-invocation to prevent auto-invocation for skills with side effects
• Deployments, PR reviews, security audits, and infrastructure tasks are all good candidates for skills