How to Build Six Claude Skills for Better Projects

TL;DR

Build a reusable Claude workflow by finding stronger source material, organizing it into a pre-analyzed knowledge base, and continuously incorporating feedback. Then evaluate work through simulated expert advisers and audience representatives before using compound engineering to ship, creating a methodical system that improves rather than restarting with every session.

Transcript

Skill number one is web scraper. The reality is that AI outputs are only as good as the data you put in. So to help us get better data, we're going to fix Claude's ability to search the internet because it currently has two major problems. The first is that it can't get data from a lot of modern websites because they use JavaScript. And the second ... Read More

Key Insights

• AI output quality depends on input data, so the first skill improves Claude's access to useful online material. Firecrawl is used to access modern JavaScript-based pages, while Exa adds semantic search that interprets meaning and intent instead of relying only on keyword matches.
• The web-scraping skill is a utility skill that can support other skills whenever Claude needs external information. Its purpose is to expand the accessible source pool, addressing the stated limitations of inaccessible modern websites and keyword-based internet searching.
• The ingest-source skill turns attached PDFs, links, and other sources into reusable project knowledge. It extracts concepts and pre-analyzes the material instead of merely storing raw data, giving Claude an organized structure comparable to a textbook's table of contents.
• The improve-system skill follows the rule that a recurring problem should not be fixed more than twice. It reduces manual prompt tweaking by creating a convenient process for recording feedback, reviewing previous behavior, and improving later outputs from accumulated experience.
• The improve-system skill has five modes: audit, skill review, experience, historical review, and foundation. These modes respectively check outdated information, improve skills, capture lived experience, inspect recent sessions for missed lessons, and identify missing knowledge about the user's goals.
• The ask-the-board skill creates simulated advisers from experts with substantial online material. After their source material is ingested, Claude can loop through each board member and provide distinct perspectives on a question, supporting a more structured decision-making process.
• The internal-focus-group skill evaluates ideas or finished work from the perspective of people who resemble the intended audience. It differs from ask-the-board because advisers offer professional guidance, while focus-group members represent the people who will actually receive the final product.
• The six-skill workflow moves from discovery and knowledge capture to improvement, evaluation, and shipping. The description identifies compound engineering as the final shipping skill, although the supplied transcript does not include the detailed explanation or setup instructions for that section.

Questions & Answers

Q: How can Claude search modern websites more effectively?

Create a web-scraping utility skill that combines Firecrawl and Exa. Firecrawl addresses the difficulty of accessing modern websites that use JavaScript, while Exa provides semantic search based on meaning and user intent rather than keyword matches alone. The resulting skill can activate whenever external research is needed and can support the other skills in the project.

Q: How do you build a reusable knowledge base in Claude?

Use an ingest-source skill to process sources such as PDFs and links, extract their concepts, and save the resulting information inside the project. The important step is pre-analyzing the material rather than storing only raw content. This creates an organized reference structure that helps Claude locate specific information later without repeating the original research in every new session.

Q: Why should source material be pre-analyzed before storage?

Pre-analysis makes specific information easier for Claude to locate and use. The transcript compares unprocessed material to a textbook that must be searched from beginning to end, while analyzed material functions like a table of contents. By extracting concepts and organizing them during ingestion, the system can retrieve relevant knowledge more directly in future conversations.

Q: How does the improve-system skill refine Claude over time?

The improve-system skill collects feedback and reviews the existing setup so recurring problems can be corrected systematically. It can identify outdated knowledge, examine skills and recent chats, incorporate the user's lived experience, recover lessons from earlier sessions, and interview the user about missing goals or context. This turns repeated use into a source of increasingly relevant project guidance.

Q: What are the five modes of the improve-system skill?

The five modes are audit, skill review, experience, historical review, and foundation. Audit scans the knowledge base for outdated information. Skill review examines skills and recent chats for improvements. Experience incorporates lived experience. Historical review searches recent Claude sessions for missed lessons. Foundation reviews the entire setup and interviews the user about information that should be added.

Q: How do you create a board of advisers in Claude?

First identify experts whose perspectives would help the project, favoring people with extensive online material because that content supplies the source data. Next, use ingest-source to add their relevant material. Then create an ask-the-board skill that loops through the selected members when invoked, allowing Claude to present multiple simulated expert perspectives on a decision or plan.

Q: What is the difference between ask-the-board and an internal focus group?

Ask-the-board is designed to simulate professional experts who advise the user on decisions. An internal focus group instead represents the people who will receive an idea or finished product. The board helps shape the work through expertise, while the focus group tests how the intended audience may respond before the work is shown or shipped to real people.

Q: What order should the six Claude skills be used in?

The described sequence begins with web scraping to discover stronger data, followed by ingest-source to capture it in a reusable knowledge base. Improve-system creates a feedback and learning process. Ask-the-board and internal-focus-group provide expert and audience evaluation. Compound engineering is listed last as the stage for actually shipping the work, completing the methodical workflow.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The workflow begins with information acquisition. A web-scraping skill combines Firecrawl for accessing modern JavaScript-based pages with Exa for semantic search. An ingest-source skill then accepts materials such as links and PDFs, extracts their concepts, and stores pre-analyzed information inside the project so later sessions can retrieve it efficiently.

• Continuous improvement comes from an improve-system skill with five modes: audit, skill review, experience, historical review, and foundation. Together, these modes identify outdated knowledge, refine skills using recent chats, capture lived experience, recover missed lessons, and interview the user about goals or context that should be added to the setup.

• The evaluation layer includes an expert board and an internal focus group. The board uses ingested public material to simulate professional perspectives, while the focus group mirrors intended recipients and tests work before release. The final listed skill, compound engineering, is positioned as the shipping stage within a methodical six-skill process.