Claude Skills: The AI Feature That’s Quietly Changing How Product Managers Work

Claude's new "Skills" feature is poised to revolutionise how professionals, particularly product managers, interact with AI. Far from being a mere enhancement, this development allows users to delegate complex, repetitive tasks to Claude, embedding specific workflows and institutional knowledge directly into the AI's capabilities. It's a move that transforms Claude from a general-purpose AI into a highly specialised assistant, tailor-made for an organisation's unique operations.

The initial rollout of Agent Skills in October 2024, followed by a significant expansion in December 2024, marked a pivotal moment. Anthropic made Skills available across claude.ai, introduced organisation-wide management for business plans, and critically, launched an open standard at agentskills.io. This commitment to an open standard suggests a future where these tailored AI capabilities aren't locked to a single platform, making the investment in custom Skills a long-term asset.

What Are Claude's Skills, Really?

At its core, a Skill is a modular capability that teaches Claude how to perform a specific task in a repeatable, specialised manner. Imagine packaging your company's brand guidelines, your preferred data analysis methods, or your product requirements document (PRD) format into a single, reusable instruction set. Instead of repeatedly explaining these processes, you create a Skill once, and Claude applies it whenever relevant.

Technically, Skills are folders containing instructions, scripts, and resources. These can include Markdown files detailing procedures, executable code for intricate operations, templates, examples, and even domain-specific knowledge. Their practical impact is profound: Claude shifts from a generalist AI to a specialist that understands your specific workflows, brand identity, data analysis methodologies, and organisational processes. For product managers, this means Claude can now assist with tasks like generating a presentation adhering to specific brand guidelines, creating data visualisations from raw data, or even flagging inconsistencies in project timelines, all within minutes rather than hours. This is a clear example of how to actually think with AI, not just ask it questions.

Why Skills Are a Game-Changer for Product Managers

Product managers often find themselves mired in repetitive tasks: drafting documents, synthesising user research, or preparing stakeholder communications. Claude's Skills directly address these pain points.

Solving the Repetitive Explanation Problem

How often do you find yourself re-explaining your company's PRD format or user story structure to an AI? Skills eliminate this inefficiency. By creating a "PRD Template" Skill, for instance, Claude automatically loads and applies your company's format, required sections, and tone whenever you request help with a PRD. This not only saves time but also ensures consistency across all generated outputs. It’s about making AI work smarter and more aligned with your established practices, leading to a more efficient workflow, echoing sentiments about whether business AI really gives back our time.

Enabling True Specialisation and Scaling Institutional Knowledge

Product management thrives on domain expertise. Skills allow you to imbue Claude with specific knowledge about your market, competitive landscape, product development methodology, and even industry-specific terminology. For example, a "User Research Analysis" Skill can incorporate your unique research questions, categorisation methods for insights, and preferred reporting formats. This ensures Claude processes information using your specific framework, rather than generic approaches.

This capability also scales institutional knowledge. Best practices, workflows, and tribal knowledge, often scattered across documents or held by experienced team members, can now be codified into Skills. New product managers can immediately tap into this collective intelligence, drastically shortening their onboarding time and ensuring consistent quality in their work. Consider how this impacts the broader workforce, where AI creates a new "meaning" of work, not just the outputs.

Integration with Existing Tools

Through its Skills Directory and Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectors, Claude can integrate with the tools you already use. Notion Skills can format product documentation according to your workspace structure, Figma Skills can generate design specifications that adhere to team conventions, and Jira/Asana Skills can create tickets following your specific formats. This seamless integration means AI assistance isn't isolated; it's embedded within your operational ecosystem, making it more practical and impactful.

"The real power isn’t in any single Skill, it’s in the accumulated effect of having 10-15 Skills that handle your most common workflows."

Practical Applications for Product Management

Let's look at some concrete examples of how product managers are leveraging Skills:

Automated Competitive Analysis: Instead of spending hours manually updating competitive landscape documents, a "Competitive Analysis" Skill can track specific competitors, evaluate features, and format findings according to a predefined template. This transforms a multi-hour task into a 30-minute review. Streamlined User Interview Synthesis: Uploading interview transcripts to Claude, with a "User Research Synthesis" Skill active, allows the AI to automatically identify themes, categorise feedback, and structure findings into a comprehensive synthesis document, freeing PMs to focus on interpretation. Efficient Technical Specification Generation: An "Tech Spec" Skill, pre-loaded with system architecture overviews, naming conventions, and required sections, enables Claude to generate technical specifications that engineers can immediately use, reducing back-and-forth communication. Tailored Stakeholder Communication: By creating specific Skills for "Executive Updates," "Engineering Briefs," and "Sales Enablement," a single comprehensive update can be adapted by Claude to suit different audiences, ensuring each stakeholder receives information in their preferred format and level of detail.

Creating Your Own Skills

The process of creating a basic Skill is surprisingly straightforward. It begins with identifying a repetitive task, such as a document format or analysis method. Then, you document the process in detail, including goals, step-by-step instructions, and examples. This documentation forms the core of your Skill, typically stored in Markdown files within a specific folder structure that Claude can interpret.

The beauty lies in the progressive disclosure and automatic invocation. Claude only loads relevant Skills when needed and often recognises from context when a Skill should be applied, without explicit prompting. Furthermore, the open standard behind Agent Skills means that the effort invested in creating these customisations is not platform-specific, offering greater longevity and wider applicability as other AI platforms adopt the standard. This approach underscores the growing need for interoperability in the AI landscape, a topic often discussed in broader tech circles, as highlighted by organisations like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

While Skills offer significant advantages, it's important to note potential drawbacks. They require Claude's code execution capability to be enabled, which might be a security concern for some enterprises. There's also an initial time investment in creating effective Skills, and they are best suited for stable, rather than highly dynamic, processes. Moreover, the quality of output is directly tied to the quality of the instructions provided, reinforcing the "garbage in, garbage out" principle.

Despite these considerations, Claude's Skills represent a powerful step towards more intelligent and integrated AI assistance. For product managers grappling with increasingly complex workloads, this feature offers a pathway to increased efficiency, consistency, and a renewed focus on strategic thinking.

What repetitive tasks in your role could be transformed by AI Skills? Share your thoughts in the comments below.