Claude Code Skills

Also: SKILL.md, Code skill, agent skill

Claude Code Skills are markdown files (SKILL.md) that teach Claude Code how to handle a specific type of task — your PR review format, your commit message style, your security checklist. Unlike CLAUDE.md which loads into every conversation, Skills load on-demand: only the name and description load at startup, the full instructions only load when a request matches. This keeps context efficient — you can have many skills without bloating every session. Skills live in four locations with a strict priority order: enterprise (managed settings) overrides personal (~/.claude/skills/) overrides project (.claude/skills/) overrides plugins. A critical gotcha: sub-agents do not inherit skills automatically — they start with a clean context, and you must explicitly list which skills they should load in the agent.md file. The allowed-tools field lets you restrict what Claude can do when a skill is active, useful for read-only or security-sensitive workflows. Not the same as Claude.ai Skills, which are workflow packages for productivity tasks.

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