A Claude Code skill is a Markdown file you drop into ~/.claude/skills/. It describes a complete workflow: when to trigger it, how to execute it step by step, what it should produce. Claude reads it at the right moment and follows it. No manual command, no copy-pasted prompt. You say "publish this article" and the skill chains the checks, image generation, commit, deploy, and LinkedIn draft on its own.
I have nine in production on this site. Eight work well. One is problematic. And that one is the most interesting to analyze.
Nine skills, nine domains
To understand what follows, here's what my nine skills do. Each covers a specific domain of my workflow:
blog-article: write and publish an article (FR + EN, OG image, deploy, LinkedIn, dev.to)
