Using skills

What is a skill?

A skill is a set of instructions Claude loads when a particular job comes up. Think of it as a recipe card: a short description on the front says when it’s useful, and the back holds the step-by-step method.

Only the descriptions stay in Claude’s memory. The full method is read only when a skill is used, so you can have hundreds installed without slowing Claude down.

Skills come in two kinds:

• Automatic skills. Claude reads the descriptions and picks one up by itself when your request matches, without you doing anything. You can also start them by hand.
• Command skills. You start these yourself by typing a slash command, like /grill-me. They do bigger things, such as running a whole interview or building a feature, so Claude never starts them on its own.

The catalog shows which kind each skill is.

Install this collection

Skills are shared in plugins: bundles of skills (and sometimes other add-ons) that you install with one command. Plugins are listed in a marketplace. This collection is a marketplace called iatee-skills.

Inside Claude Code, run these three commands, one at a time:

/plugin marketplace add iatee/claude-skills

/plugin install all@iatee-skills

/reload-plugins

That’s it. all installs every recommended plugin:

Plugin	For
planning	Turning ideas into plans: interviews, specs, tickets, research, a decision council
coding	Building and fixing code: test-first development, debugging, code review, browser automation
frontend	Making interfaces look good: impeccable and taste-skill
writing	Writing for people and for AI agents, and learning new things
sessions	Handing work to a fresh session, and looking back on finished work
suggester	Tells you when one of your skills fits what you’re doing

Two more are opt-in, because they change every session: ponytail (pushes Claude toward the simplest code that works) and observer (collects ideas for new skills as you work). Install either with /plugin install ponytail@iatee-skills or /plugin install observer@iatee-skills.

Prefer only some of it? Install single plugins instead of all, for example /plugin install frontend@iatee-skills.

Two extra installs

• Node.js for the suggester. Download the LTS version from nodejs.org. Without it, Claude Code shows a reminder when a session starts, and everything else works normally.
• Playwright CLI if you want Claude to drive a browser. In your terminal, run npm install -g @playwright/cli (this needs Node.js too).

Start a skill

Type / in Claude Code to see every command and skill. Keep typing to filter the list.

/grill-me I want to start a newsletter about home gardening

Anything you type after the command is passed to the skill, so you can give it the topic straight away.

Every plugin skill also has a long name with the plugin in front, like /planning:grill-me. You only need the long name when two things share a short name. The one case in this collection: use /coding:code-review for the review skill here, because plain /code-review is Claude Code’s own built-in review.

For automatic skills you don’t need to do anything. Ask for what you want (“this test keeps failing and I don’t know why”) and Claude picks up the right skill.

The suggester

Nobody remembers fifty skills. The suggester watches each message you send and, when one of your installed skills clearly fits, tells Claude about it. If it’s a skill that only you can start, Claude mentions it in one line:

💡 /coding:tdd could help here: it builds this test-first, one step at a time.

It never starts a skill that’s yours to run; that’s up to you. Skills Claude can use on its own, it may simply use. It stays quiet when nothing fits, mentions each skill only once per conversation, and knows every skill you have installed, not just the ones from this collection.

It also remembers plans. When a skill ends with a numbered list of commands to run next, like the recommendations after /impeccable audit, run any step and Claude names the next one when it’s done. Say “run the plan” and Claude runs every remaining step in order, committing after each. This works in a later session too.

Command	What it does
/suggester off	Mute suggestions.
/suggester on	Turn them back on.
/suggester plan	Run the remembered plan’s remaining steps.

Keep it up to date

New skills and fixes arrive through the marketplace. To get them, run this in your terminal (not inside Claude Code):

claude plugin marketplace update iatee-skills
claude plugin update all@iatee-skills

Then, inside Claude Code, run /reload-plugins. This last step matters when a plugin was newly added to all; it’s what installs it. The changelog lists what changed.

Remove it

In your terminal:

claude plugin uninstall all@iatee-skills
claude plugin prune

prune removes the plugins that all brought along and nothing else needs. Or remove everything at once, including the marketplace:

claude plugin marketplace remove iatee-skills

Where to go next

• Skill catalog: every skill, what it does, and when to use it.
• Power user guide: chain skills into workflows and write your own.
• Customize Claude Code: a status bar, mods and memory between sessions.