Week 2 · foundation

Claude Design + Skills 101

Describe what you want so Claude nails it — then make it reusable as a Skill.

Description

Reliability is the theme: getting great output on purpose, not by luck. We teach Description — the AI-Fluency competency where prompting actually lives — as three moves: product (what to make), process (how to approach it), performance (how to behave). Then we rebuild your Project’s instructions and feel the jump in quality.

The back half introduces Skills — reusable instructions in a SKILL.md that Claude loads only when relevant (progressive disclosure, so installing many doesn’t slow it down). You build your first one and hit the wow: a one-line prompt doing what used to need a full re-explanation.

Learner goals

Apply the Description discipline: product, process, and performance.

Rebuild your Project instructions for reliable, high-quality answers.

Understand what a Skill is, how it loads (progressive disclosure), and why it's the key idea of the course.

Build and trigger your first custom Skill with a clean SKILL.md.

What you set up live

Rewrite your Project's custom instructions (product/process/performance).

Create your first Skill via Customize → Skills → Create with Claude.

Test the Skill on a real task and confirm it triggers reliably.

Run-of-show · 180 min

The session timeline. The amber row is where the wow lands.

Time	Segment	Mode
0:00 · 10m	Recap & today's outcome	Talk
0:10 · 35m	Description: product, process, performance	Talk
0:45 · 35m	Build-along: rebuild your Project instructions	Build-along
1:20 · 10m	Break	Break
1:30 · 20m	Skills 101: what they are and why they matter	Talk
1:50 · 40m	Build-along: your first Skill ✦ wow	Build-along
2:30 · 25m	Role breakout: pick your first useful Skill	Breakout
2:55 · 5m	Project handoff (Description)	Talk

Wow moment

Teach once, reuse forever

Trigger your first Skill with a single line and watch Claude do what used to take a paragraph of re-explaining every time.

~1:50 — Build-along: your first Skill

This week's project

A Sharpened Project + Your First Skill

Level up last week's Project with stronger instructions and knowledge, then build your first custom Skill.

Deliverable: A refined role Project and one working Skill (with a SKILL.md) that you can trigger on demand.

Done when

✓Project custom instructions are rewritten using the Description discipline (product/process/performance).
✓A first Skill exists with a clear SKILL.md and a name/description that triggers reliably.
✓The Skill produces a consistent, useful output on a real task.
✓You can explain when Claude loads the Skill and why.

Facilitator materials

· Slide deck: decks/week-02.md
· SKILL.md starter template
· Before/after prompt examples

← Week 1 Week 3 →

Become the AI-powered one in your office

Eight weeks. A real project every week. A personal AI assistant that does real work for you — taught live.

Join the next cohort See the 8 weeks