Skill Forge

Teach your AI assistant to do YOUR job, your way — no coding, no tech skills, just a conversation.

You know how Claude (or ChatGPT) gives you decent-but-generic answers? Like it's a smart temp on their first day who doesn't know your business, your voice, or how you like things done?

Skill Forge fixes that. It turns Claude into a coach that interviews you about how you do something — writing listing descriptions, prepping for a buyer consult, following up after an open house — and then builds a reusable "skill" from your answers. After that, Claude does the task your way, every time, without you re-explaining it.

See the difference

Without a skill, you ask Claude to write a listing description and get:

"Welcome to this stunning, meticulously maintained gem nestled in a highly sought-after neighborhood! This home boasts an abundance of natural light..."

Generic. Sounds like every other listing on the MLS.

With a skill built from a 10-minute conversation about how YOU write, you get your structure, your vocabulary, your rules ("never say 'boasts,' always lead with the neighborhood story, always end with the lifestyle line"). Every listing, every time, in seconds.

That's what a skill is: a recipe card you write once, and your AI follows forever.

What you need

1. A Claude account (claude.ai — the paid plan is what makes skills available)
2. Five minutes

That's it. No coding. Nothing to install on your computer.

How to install it (3 steps)

1. Download the skill file. Click the file named skill-forge.skill at the top of this page, then click the download button (the icon with the arrow pointing down).
2. Give it to Claude. Open a new chat at claude.ai (or in the Claude desktop app) and attach the skill-forge.skill file you just downloaded, like you'd attach a photo to a text message.
3. Save it. Claude will show the file with a Save skill button. Click it. Done — it's now part of your Claude, in every future conversation.

How to use it

Open a chat and say something like:

"I want to make a skill for writing my weekly newsletter."

or

"Help me build a skill that preps me for listing appointments the way I like to do them."

Claude will take it from there — it interviews you about how you do the task, drafts the skill, tests it on realistic examples and shows you the results, then tightens it based on your feedback. That testing step is what makes this different from just pasting instructions into a chat: you see it work before you rely on it.

Ideas to steal (real estate edition)

• A skill that writes listing descriptions in your voice, with your do's and don'ts
• A skill that turns your messy showing notes into a polished client follow-up email
• A skill that preps you before every buyer consult with the questions you always want asked
• A skill that reviews your newsletter before it goes out, checking the things you always forget
• A skill that drafts your open house follow-up texts, in the tone you actually use

Build one, and Claude does that task your way for as long as you use it. Build five, and you've got an assistant that actually knows your business.

Common questions

Do I need to know how to code? No. If you can have a conversation and describe how you do your job, you can build a skill.

Is my information safe? A skill is just a document of instructions that lives in your Claude account. Don't put client private data inside a skill (names, SSNs, loan numbers) — put your process in it. The skill is the recipe, not the ingredients.

What if the skill doesn't work right? That's the whole point of Skill Forge — it tests skills before you rely on them, shows you the results, and fixes what you don't like. Tell it what's wrong in plain English ("too formal," "too long," "you forgot the call to action") and it revises.

Can I share the skills I make? Yes. Skills you build are files you can send to anyone on your team, and they install them the same 3-step way.

What's the difference between this and just typing instructions into ChatGPT every time? Memory and consistency. Instructions in a chat evaporate when the chat ends. A skill is saved, tested, and applies automatically every time the task comes up.

---

For technical users

Click to expand

Skill Forge is a fork of Anthropic's Apache-2.0-licensed skill-creator with an added authoring methodology distilled from the top skill repos on GitHub (superpowers, mattpocock/skills, anthropics/skills, and others):

• references/writing-principles.md — ten principles for writing skill bodies (trigger-only descriptions, no-op deletion, example pairing, freedom-matched-to-fragility, token budgeting), with a pre-ship checklist.
• references/pressure-testing.md — a RED → GREEN → REFACTOR loop for skills: baseline the agent without the skill, capture its failures and rationalizations verbatim, write the minimal skill that fixes them, then pressure-test with scenarios stacking time pressure, sunk cost, and authority until no new rationalizations appear.
• SKILL.md changes — RED-first baseline workflow for discipline skills, observed-loophole closing in the improvement loop, and pointers to both references.

The original eval workflow (parallel subagent runs, baseline comparison, grading, benchmark aggregation, the HTML eval viewer, and the description-optimization loop) is unchanged.

Install paths:

• Claude Code / CLI:

  npx skills add Bistromath-Works/skill-forge
  

• Manual:

  git clone https://github.com/Bistromath-Works/skill-forge && cp -r skill-forge/skill-forge ~/.claude/skills/
  

• Or save the .skill file via any Claude surface that supports it.

License and attribution

Derived from skill-creator by Anthropic, PBC, under the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE.txt and NOTICE.txt for details and modifications. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.