If you read my guide for Claude subagents, you know how to build a team of AI specialists, your own little army of copywriters, researchers, and testing nerds working around the clock.
That’s a great first step. But here’s the catch nobody talks about.
Those AI agents are like hiring a team of rockstars who show up on day one knowing absolutely nothing about your business. They have talent, but no direction. No soul. No playbook.
Skills are how you give them the playbook.
Think about your biggest winning campaigns. The home runs. Buried in your brain, or maybe scattered across a dozen Google Docs, are the frameworks and processes that made them work. The headline formulas that always print money. The email sequence that turns ice-cold leads into buyers. The research method you use to find the gold nobody else sees.
Claude Skills let you bottle up your secret sauce and plug it directly into your AI account for calling it into action in any chat, even on mobile devices.
You’re not just giving them tasks anymore, you’re giving them your brain. And unlike an employee you trained for 6 months and quits on you, this knowledge is permanent.
It stays in your system, working for you, forever.
This is Part 2 of the Claude Code series for direct response marketers. If you haven’t built your first subagent, stop reading, go back, and do that now. This guide is for people who are ready to get serious.
What Are Claude Skills (vs. Subagents)?
Let me make this simple for you:
Subagents are the WHO. Skills are the HOW.
A subagent is your AI worker. A skill is the knowledge that makes the worker smart.
It’s a folder on your computer with your templates, your checklists, and your secret sauce. When you ask Claude to do something, the right skill should kick in. I say should because it's not perfect, but we'll get to that.
Ask for a sales email, and your “sales-copy” skill can feed Claude your best email frameworks, your brand voice, and your compliance rules. It doesn’t just write an email, it writes your kind of email. The kind that actually converts.
Skills Are Recipes, Subagents Are Cooks
I’m stealing this analogy because it’s perfect. A subagent is a cook. A skill is the recipe.
You can hire a 5-star chef (your subagent), but without your grandma’s secret recipe for apple pie (your skill), he’s just making generic dessert. Give him the recipe, and he’s cranking out your signature dish, perfectly, every single time.
For us marketers, this means you can take the stuff that took you a decade to master, the Gary Halbert principles, the Eugene Schwartz awareness levels, the hooks that work in your niche, and bake them right into your AI.
Your Ad Copy subagent suddenly becomes a killer when it has a skill with your winning ad templates. Your SEO subagent becomes a beast when it has a skill with your content frameworks.
It’s Just a Folder
Don’t let the tech scare you. A skill is just a folder with a few files in it:
SKILL.md: The main instruction file. Required.
Reference files: Your templates, examples, swipe files.
Scripts: Fancy automation stuff you can add later.
If you can make a folder on your computer, you can build a skill.
The Skills That Actually Make You Money
After seeing dozens of marketers use this, I’ve seen which skills deliver the biggest bang for your buck. Start with these.
The Sales Copy Framework Skill: This is your money-maker. It’s your brand voice, your headline formulas, your AIDA/PAS frameworks, your compliance rules, and your best-performing ads. This one skill will instantly level-up every piece of copy your AI writes.
The Offer Architecture Skill: Most offers are weak. This skill contains your formula for building irresistible offers. Your value stacking method, your pricing psychology, your bonus strategies, your guarantees, your urgency and scarcity plays. It makes your AI think like a world-class offer creator.
The Research & Analysis Skill: We live and die by knowing our market. This skill has your competitive analysis framework, your customer research process, and your templates for turning data into angles you can use in your copy.
The Testing & Optimization Skill: This turns your testing from a guessing game into a science. It has your rules for prioritizing tests, your standards for statistical significance, and your process for documenting what you learn so it’s not forgotten.
How to Build a Claude Skill (The Step-by-Step Guide)
Enough talk. Let’s build one right now. We’ll create the Sales Copy Framework skill.
Step 1: Create the Folder
Go to one of these spots on your computer:
For global skills (you can use them in any project):
~/.claude/skills/For project-specific skills:
./.claude/skills/inside your project folder.
Create a new folder there and name it sales-copy-framework.
(On a Mac, ~ is your home folder. On Windows, it’s C:\Users\YourUsername\. You might need to show hidden files to see the .claude folder, and you might need to create it if it's not there.)
Step 2: Create the SKILL.md File
This is the brain. Open Notepad or any text editor. Create a file named SKILL.md inside your new folder and paste this in. Pay close attention to the description field. This is the most important part.
---
name: sales-copy-framework
description: Use when writing sales copy, ad copy, landing pages, email sequences, VSL scripts, or sales letters. Provides direct response copywriting frameworks and brand voice guidelines.
---
# Sales Copy Framework
You are writing direct response copy designed to generate measurable action. Every piece of copy should move the reader toward a specific conversion goal.
## Brand Voice Guidelines
[**FILL THIS IN!** Your specific brand voice description goes here.]
- Tone: Conversational but authoritative. Like a knowledgeable friend, not a corporate brochure.
- Language level: Write at an 8th-grade reading level. Short sentences. Active voice.
- Personality: [**FILL THIS IN!** Your brand's personality traits.]
## Core Copywriting Frameworks
### PAS (Problem-Agitate-Solve)
1. **Problem**: Identify the specific pain point.
2. **Agitate**: Amplify the emotional impact of that problem.
3. **Solve**: Present your offer as the clear solution.
### AIDA (Attention-Interest-Desire-Action)
1. **Attention**: Pattern interrupt with a compelling hook.
2. **Interest**: Build curiosity with relevant specifics.
3. **Desire**: Create want through benefits and proof.
4. **Action**: Clear, specific call to action.
## How to Use Reference Files
To get my best-performing headlines, read the `winning-headlines.md` file in this folder using the `cat` command.
Example:
`cat ./winning-headlines.md`
## Compliance Requirements
[**FILL THIS IN!** Your specific compliance rules - platform policies, legal requirements, prohibited claims.]
- Never make income claims without documented proof.
- Never guarantee specific results.
- Always include appropriate disclaimers for [your industry].
## Conversion Principles
1. **One reader, one offer, one action**: Every piece targets a single reader with a single offer leading to a single action.
2. **Benefits over features**: Lead with what it does for them, not what it is.
3. **Specificity sells**: "Lost 23 pounds in 6 weeks" beats "Lose weight fast."
4. **Proof elements**: Include testimonials, case studies, statistics, credentials.
5. **Risk reversal**: Address objections and reduce perceived risk.
IMPORTANT: Notice there is no triggers field. That was a mistake in the original article. The description is what tells Claude when to use the skill. Write a good, clear, single-line description.
Step 3: Add Your Secret Sauce (Reference Files)
In that same sales-copy-framework folder, create more files. These are your swipe files.
winning-headlines.md: A list of your best headlines. Add notes on why they worked.email-templates.md: Your best email templates.audience-avatar.md: A detailed description of your ideal customer.
These files are NOT automatically loaded. You have to tell Claude in your SKILL.md file how to read them, like I did in the example above.
Step 4: Test It (And Be Patient)
Restart Claude Code or start a new session. Now, give it a prompt like:
Write a landing page headline for our new course on Facebook advertising for e-commerce brands.
Now, here's the honest truth: skills don't always fire automatically. It's not perfect. If it doesn't seem to be using your skill, just tell it directly:
Use the sales-copy-framework skill to write a landing page headline...
I just do this all the time anyway to be sure.
Copy-Paste Ready: The Direct Response Email Skill
Here’s another one you can build right now. Email is where the money is, so this is a big one.
Create a folder named dr-email-sequences in your skills directory. Inside, create a file named SKILL.md and paste this in:
---
name: dr-email-sequences
description: Use for creating high-converting direct response email sequences, including welcome sequences, launch sequences, and nurture campaigns.
---
# Direct Response Email Sequence Framework
You are creating email sequences designed to build relationships and drive conversions. Every email should feel like a one-to-one conversation.
## Email Philosophy
- Write like you're emailing one person, not a list.
- Every email must provide value, even if it's also selling.
- Subject lines are 80% of the battle. Spend your energy there.
## How to Use Reference Files
To get my best subject lines, read the `subject-lines.md` file in this folder.
To get my best email templates, read the `email-templates.md` file.
Example:
`cat ./subject-lines.md`
## Sequence Frameworks
### Welcome Sequence (5-7 Emails)
1. **Delivery + Quick Win**: Deliver the goods, give immediate value.
2. **Your Story**: Who you are, why you do this.
3. **Their Problem**: Agitate the pain.
4. **The Solution**: Introduce your way.
5. **Proof**: Case studies, testimonials.
6. **The Offer**: Make the pitch.
7. **FAQ/Objection Handling**: Address concerns.
### Launch Sequence (7-10 Emails)
1. **Announcement**: Something new is coming.
2. **The Problem**: Why the old way is broken.
3. **The Solution**: What makes this different.
4. **Case Study**: Detailed success story.
5. **Inside Look**: What's included.
6. **Objection Handler**: Address the big fear.
7. **Open Cart**: It's go-time.
8. **Reminder**: Urgency.
9. **Last Chance**: Final call.
10. **Closed**: Recap what they missed.
## What NOT To Do
- Don't open with "I hope this email finds you well."
- Don't use more than one CTA.
- Don't write walls of text.
- Don't be clever instead of clear.A Note on Subagents and Skills
In the last article, I mentioned you could link skills to subagents directly in the subagent's file. That seems to be an unverified or experimental feature, so for now, it's best to just call the skills you need from within your subagent's instructions.
You Need to Do This Right Now. Today.
Let me be brutally honest with you.
Your competitors are reading this. The smart ones are already building their skills. They are taking their years of hard-won marketing knowledge, their winning formulas, their customer insights, and they are permanently encoding it into their AI.
Every day you wait, they are building a smarter, faster, more effective marketing machine. An AI that has their best thinking baked into its DNA.
Soon, they will have an entire team of AI agents, all armed with the knowledge that made their business successful. They will be able to out-research you, out-write you, and out-test you at a scale you cannot possibly imagine. They will be launching better campaigns, faster than you can.
Once their AI has this advantage, you will not be able to outrun them. You can't outwork an army of AI clones that have your competitor's brain. You will be permanently behind.
This is not a drill. This is the new arms race. The people who codify their knowledge into AI via markdown files are going to build an insurmountable lead.
You'll be driving a Ford Mustang, but they'll be piloting an F1 race car.
So get to work.
Build your first skill. Today. Not tomorrow.
--> Click here read my fastest way to create Claude skills.
