Claude Record a Skill Guide

Record your first skill

Claude Cowork can watch you do a task once and turn it into a skill it can run again. No prompts to write and no steps to document by hand. You just work, and it learns.

Open Record a Skill

In the Claude Desktop app, click the + menu and choose Record a Skill. This only lives in Cowork on desktop right now, not the web app and not mobile, and it's on Pro, Max and Team plans.

Hit record and just work

Do the task exactly how you normally would. Don't slow down or perform for the camera. Claude is watching your clicks and your typing, and it learns your real workflow, not a tidied-up version of it.

Narrate the why, not just the what

Say what you're doing out loud as you go. "I'm checking the invoice date before I send it." "I skip this step if the client already paid a deposit." Claude only learns the reasoning you say, so the judgement calls matter more than the clicking.

Call out the exceptions

If there's a version of this task that's different for a VIP client, a bigger invoice or a different platform, narrate that too. It's how Claude learns when to ask you instead of guessing.

Stop the recording

Claude turns the whole thing into a skill automatically. No markdown files, no prompt engineering.

Before you trust a new skill with anything real, run this prompt. It gets Claude to check its own work and flag anything it shouldn't have kept.

Turn that recording into a skill called [name]. Ask me anything that was unclear, list the steps back to me, and flag any step where you saw information that shouldn't be saved.

5 skills worth recording

Start with the tasks you already do the same way every time. That's where a recorded skill pays off fastest.

🧾

Invoice run

Record your monthly invoice round and Claude learns which clients get billed when, what line items you always include, and when it's time to chase a late payment.

📊

Weekly report

Show it how you pull your numbers together once. Next week it can build the same report in the same layout without you explaining it again.

📋

Client onboarding checklist

Record the folder structure, welcome email and calendar invite you send every new client, and Claude can run the whole checklist from one nudge.

🗓️

Content scheduling

Walk it through how you upload, caption and schedule a week of posts. It picks up your platform order and your usual posting times.

📥

Inbox triage

Show it what you archive, what you flag and what you always answer first, and it learns your actual triage rules instead of generic ones.

Before you hit record

Claude Cowork captures everything visible on screen while it's rolling, not just the bit you're clicking on. Run through this before you start.

Privacy checklist

No passwords or secrets on screen. If you need to log into something mid-recording, pause first and log in off camera.

Close any tabs or windows you don't need for this task. Personal banking, other clients' files, anything that isn't part of the job you're recording.

Use dummy data the first time you record a new workflow if it touches anything client identifying, so you can see what gets captured before you risk the real thing.

Review what the skill saved. Run the cleanup prompt from the top of this guide and actually read what it flags back to you.

What we don't know yet

Anthropic hadn't published detailed retention or storage documentation for skill recordings as of July 2026. Treat anything sensitive as if it's being kept somewhere, and keep it off screen rather than trusting it'll be filtered out.