Package workflows as Skills

🎯Goal. Turn a repeated set of instructions into a reusable Skill your whole team can invoke.

1. 1Create a SKILL.md file with instructions — e.g. .claude/skills/review-pr/SKILL.md creates /review-pr. Claude adds it to its toolkit and uses it when relevant, or you invoke it directly with /skill-name.
2. 2Reach for a Skill when you keep pasting the same checklist or multi-step procedure, or when a section of CLAUDE.md has grown into a procedure rather than a fact. A Skill's body loads only when used, so it costs almost nothing until you need it.
3. 3Claude Code Skills follow the open Agent Skills standard (agentskills.io), so they work across multiple AI tools. (Custom commands have merged into Skills — old .claude/commands/*.md files still work.)

✓You'll see. A /-command of your own — e.g. /clean-fastq — that runs your exact procedure on demand.

💳Cost. Skills load on-demand, so moving long procedures out of CLAUDE.md and into Skills keeps your base context (and cost) smaller.

💡Takeaway. If you've pasted the same steps twice, make a Skill — write it once as SKILL.md and call it with a slash command forever after.