You know the document you make over and over, like the meeting notes or the weekly update that looks a little different each time but follows the same shape. In project-based businesses, such as interior design studios and architecture firms, those documents quietly fill the week of whoever keeps things running. An AI skill can take on that kind of work, and building your first one is easier than it sounds.
The Two Hours I Didn't Want to Spend Again
A quick refresher in case you missed the recipe idea in Part 1. An AI skill is a set of written instructions you give an AI tool for one particular job, so you don't have to explain it from scratch each time. Like a recipe, a skill helps the result come out the same way from one time to the next.
Mine started with a 30-minute client call and about ten topics to cover. I knew getting ready would take me a couple of hours, and I'd done the same kind of prep only a week earlier. So I spent those two hours building a skill in Claude instead, and I started at the end.
Start With the Finished Dish
Before I wrote a single instruction, I made the perfect meeting prep document in Word. I wanted something I could read easily during a live Zoom call, with the right font size, single-line text, bullet points and checkboxes for what I needed to cover in each section. I kept adjusting it until I was happy with it.
Then I worked backwards. Rather than describe a good prep document from memory, I gave Claude the finished one and let it figure out what made it work. A good baker can taste a loaf and work out much of the recipe behind it. Claude can do something similar with a document you already like.
Working backwards from a finished document helped me so much that I turned the process into a complete prompt you can use to do the same. You can download it here.
Let Claude Interview You
Once Claude had my sample, it interviewed me. A document can show its layout, but it can't show when you'd use it or what you want to avoid, so the AI has to ask. The prompt has the AI ask you one question at a time and wait for your answer.
This way, you can answer, step away for a meeting and pick up where you left off. I've written before about letting AI interview you, and the same idea works well here. You don't need to be an expert or know any technical terms. Plain English is enough, and the prompt asks the AI to talk to you in plain English too.
This Was Just the Start
The interview gave me a working skill, and that was only the beginning. Next, I made sure it had every part a good skill needs. These are the same parts the prompt walks you through, with the recipe word beside each:
Background (the ingredients): what's always true, such as your business, your reader and your standards.
The Job and its Steps (the method): what the skill does every time, in order when the order matters.
Guardrails (bake until golden but before it burns): what the AI should avoid or stay within.
Ask When Missing (checking which oven you have): what the AI should ask you for instead of guessing.
The prompt also gives your skill a short name, sets the format of what comes out, including the file type, and adds an example of good output. Leave out an ingredient, and the result won't taste right, so it's worth checking each part before you rely on the skill.
Test It, Then Improve It
My first call with the skill went great. On my second call, I noticed something I hadn't planned for. Sometimes several items belong together, like five separate computer hardware items, and seeing them grouped helps me call out that part of the conversation.
So I went back and tweaked the skill. Now it spots similar items and groups them under one numbered item, such as 2, with each one listed as 2.1, 2.2 and so on. Cooks adjust a recipe after tasting it, and your first version won't be your last.
The bigger change has been how I feel during client calls. Prep became thinking time instead of formatting time, so I go into each conversation calmer.
Add Your Skill to Your AI Tool
When you use the prompt I built for you above and finish the interview, it will hand you your finished skill as a file called SKILL.md. Every AI tool has its own way of adding a skill, and AdSpyder has a clear, visual guide to adding AI skills to ChatGPT, Claude and other tools.
Start With One Part of Your Day
Skills suit work you repeat in a similar shape, like meeting prep, weekly updates or recaps. A one-off task, or a decision that rests mostly on your judgment, is better handled by you. Your first skill will take some time to build, mine took two hours, and you'll still look over what it gives you before it goes to a client.
Start with one part of your day. Pick a document you already make well and let the prompt work backwards from your best example. If the recurring work that eats up your week feels like too much to sort through, we can help you pick where to begin. If your whole team is ready to start working this way, we also have a program for small businesses to do exactly that.
The best version of your work already exists in a document you've made, and your first skill can start there.
If you'd like help choosing the first document to turn into a skill, let's have a 15 minute conversation. We'll look at your best example together and map out your first recipe.