How do I install the Build A Skill Claude Code skill?

Install via the ClaudSkills desktop app (one click) or copy SKILL.md from the source repository to ~/.claude/skills/build-a-skill/SKILL.md and restart Claude Code. Both flows are detailed at https://claudskills.com/install/.

Is this skill free to install?

Yes. ClaudSkills is an open registry — every skill keeps its source repository's license, and manual install via copy is free. ClaudSkills Pro ($9/mo, $79/yr, or $149 one-time) adds one-click install via the desktop app and a multi-signal Quality Score.

ClaudSkills / Engineering / testing

Build A Skill

Category: Engineering · Sub-category: testing · Last updated: 2026-05-22

Interactive tutorial that walks the user through designing, writing, testing, and distributing their own Skill for Claude. Use when the user says "teach me how to build a skill", "help me make a skill", "walk me through skill creation", "I want to learn skills", "/build-a-skill", or asks about SKILL.md structure, YAML frontmatter for skills, progressive disclosure, skill distribution, or how to package a workflow as a reusable skill. Covers fundamentals, planning, technical requirements, instruction writing, testing, distribution, and common patterns.

From the source SKILL.md

You are running an interactive tutorial that teaches the user how to build their own Skill for Claude. Your job is not to dump the contents of this file on them - it is to walk them through the material conversationally, ask questions, react to their answers, and at the end produce a working SKILL.md folder for the project they have in mind.

What this skill does

Build A Skill is a community-contributed Claude Code skill in the testing sub-category. It ships as a SKILL.md file that Claude Code auto-discovers under ~/.claude/skills/build-a-skill/ and loads when your prompt matches the skill's trigger.

When to invoke it: Use when the user says "teach me how to build a skill", "help me make a skill", "walk me through skill creation", "I want to learn skills", "/build-a-skill", or asks about SKILL.md structure, YAML frontmatter for skills, progressive disclosure, skill distribution, or how to package a workflow as a reusable skill.

Who uses this skill

The Build A Skill Claude Code skill is built for software engineers, backend developers, full-stack teams, and technical leads building and maintaining production systems. It's part of ClaudSkills (also referred to as Claude Skills or Claude Code Skills) — the open community-curated registry of 70,000+ SKILL.md files for Anthropic's Claude Code agent and the wider Claude ecosystem (Claude API, Claude Agent SDK).

How to install

Free

Manual install (2 steps)

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/build-a-skill
curl -L https://claudskills.com/skills/build-a-skill/SKILL.md \
  -o ~/.claude/skills/build-a-skill/SKILL.md

Or just download SKILL.md directly and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/build-a-skill/. Claude Code auto-discovers it on next session.

Skills live at ~/.claude/skills/build-a-skill/SKILL.md on macOS/Linux, or %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\build-a-skill\SKILL.md on Windows. See the full install guide for step-by-step instructions.

Pro

One-click install via the desktop app

The ClaudSkills desktop app installs any skill directly into ~/.claude/skills/ with one click — no terminal required. Pro starts at $9/mo or $149 lifetime.

Pro

For the full experience including quality scoring and one-click install features for each skill — upgrade to Pro.

See pricing → Download desktop app

Attribution & license

Source: https://github.com/egalano/build-a-skill/blob/HEAD/build-a-skill/SKILL.md
Author: egalano

Cite this skill

If you reference this skill in a blog post, paper, or documentation, you can cite it as:

APA

egalano. (2026). Build A Skill [Claude Code skill]. ClaudSkills. https://claudskills.com/skills/build-a-skill/

BibTeX

@misc{build-a-skill-2026,
  author    = {egalano},
  title     = {Build A Skill [Claude Code skill]},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {ClaudSkills},
  url       = {https://claudskills.com/skills/build-a-skill/}
}

Embed this skill

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Badge

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Part of ClaudSkills — the open registry for Claude Skills & Claude Code Skills. · What's New · Install guide · About · llms.txt

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