SOP 001: Create Your First Skill

Fresh

Purpose

Create a basic Claude Code skill from scratch, test it, and verify it works both automatically and via direct invocation.

Priority

When skills share the same name: enterprise > personal > project. Plugin skills use plugin-name:skill-name namespace and cannot conflict.

bash

# Personal skill (available everywhere)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/my-skill

# Project skill (this repo only)
mkdir -p .claude/skills/my-skill

Create SKILL.md with two parts:

yaml

---
name: my-skill
description: What this skill does and when to use it
---

Your instructions here. Claude follows these when the skill is invoked.

Automatic invocation - ask something matching the description:

How does this code work?

Direct invocation - use the slash command:

/my-skill

Issue	Cause	Fix
Skill not found	Wrong directory path	Verify path matches table above
Name conflict	Same name at multiple levels	Higher priority wins (enterprise > personal > project)
Skill and command conflict	Both exist with same name	Skill takes precedence over command