The Startup Ideas Podcast with Greg Isenberg

Episode Title: Set Up Claude Skills in 21 Mins (for Non-Technical People)
Release Date: December 24, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, Greg Isenberg provides a step-by-step beginner’s guide to setting up Claude Skills—a feature in Anthropic’s Claude AI assistant designed to make your AI workflows more powerful and reliable. Aimed specifically at non-technical listeners, Greg demystifies the setup process, illustrates practical use cases, and shares actionable tips for iteratively improving these skills for business, productivity, and creative projects.

The focus is on how making custom Claude Skills can supercharge your work by delivering consistent, high-value outputs without needing any coding expertise. Greg also walks through a live example of building a custom skill tailored for copywriting reviews in app and website projects and shares best practices for getting the most out of this new AI capability.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Claude Skills Matter

• Claude Skills can dramatically increase the output quality and consistency of the AI by letting you define reusable instructions or workflows.
• By creating a tailored skill, you’re essentially building a specialized virtual team member who remembers your business context and standards.

“You will be able to get way more out of Claude if you use Skills. It's just going to get way, way more consistent, higher value stuff.”
— Greg (00:18)

2. Getting Started: Enabling Claude Skills

• Navigation: To enable Skills, go to Settings → Capabilities in Claude, then scroll to the ‘Skills (Preview)’ feature and activate it.
• Methods to Create a Skill:
  1. Build through conversation (guided wizard, uses the ‘Skill Creator’ skill)
  2. Write Skill Instructions (manual for simple descriptions)
  3. Upload a Skill (for pre-built .zip or .skill files)
• Greg recommends the conversational onboarding for most users:

  “For the vast majority of people, you actually want to just hit 'let's create a skill together'.”
  — Greg (02:00)

3. Live Walkthrough: Building a Copywriting Review Skill

• Example Scenario: Greg, as a design agency owner, wants a Claude Skill to critique and enhance copywriting for his app/web projects—focusing on conversion optimization.
• The Skill Creator asks clarifying questions:
  • Types of apps/websites (e.g., mobile AI apps, SaaS)
  • How the copy is shared (e.g., screenshots, Figma files, pasted text)
  • Which copy elements to review (e.g., headlines, CTAs, onboarding)
  • Preferred review format (e.g., scored assessments, before/after suggestions)
• Greg answers “All of the above,” demonstrating it’s accessible and conversational.

4. Why Not Just Use Projects?

• Skills provide persistent, reusable context and standards across projects, unlike Claude’s ‘Projects’ which are campaign or task-specific.
• Analogy:

  “Think of skills as like you're building your team a little bit and you need a set of skills that are going to work regardless if you're working on a campaign or if you're working on just, your day to day operations.”
  — Greg (12:50)

5. Skill Creation Details & Structure

• Claude builds the skill using simple Markdown (.md) files for easy readability/editing even for non-coders.
• Example structure of the Copywriting Review Skill:
  • Main workflow: Skill.md — step-by-step instructions and scoring template
  • Frameworks: Conversion frameworks like AIDA, PAS, BAB
  • Element Guidelines: Best practices per element (headline, CTA, etc.)
  • Prioritization system: Issues tagged by impact (critical, high, medium, low)

“Markdown files are super easy to understand. If you're non-technical obviously you can really understand it. So I'm happy that they picked such an easy way to actually get involved.”
— Greg (15:10)

6. Uploading and Testing the Skill

• To use, download the skill and upload via the Skills section in Claude's settings.
• Demonstrates using the new skill by uploading app store screenshots and website copy (e.g., from ‘Calai,’ a calorie-tracking app).
• Outputs include:
  • Assessment of current copy's weaknesses
  • Concrete before/after alternatives
  • Scoring (e.g., “3 out of 10” harsh but constructive)
  • Prioritized improvement suggestions and rationale

“Option one: 'Track calories in three seconds.' I actually like the three seconds. I think that's really good... It's pretty harsh, three on ten. But yeah, that's honest!”
— Greg (23:00)

7. Notable Skill Output Examples

• App Copy Critique:
  “Too generic. Every calorie tracker claims to be easy. There's no specific benefit or differentiation. ‘Let us do the rest’ is nothing meaningful.” (24:00)
• Alternatives Provided:
  • “Track calories in three seconds. No manual logging. Get exact portions using iPhone depth sensing.”
    • Rationale: Specific, eliminates friction, uniquely leverages technology.
  • “Lost 17 pounds without counting a single calorie. Your count camera calculates everything instantly. Join 5 million users.”
    • Rationale: Success-oriented, uses strong social proof.

8. Best Practices: Making Skills Even Better

• Greg shares a 10-step process from James (“boring marketer”) to iterate and upgrade a skill:
  1. Understand the specific problem deeply
  2. Test with edge cases
  3. Research domain best practices
  4. Synthesize key principles
  5. Draft the initial skill
  6. Self-critique against quality benchmarks
  7. Iterate and get feedback
  8. Test in real-world scenarios
  9. Finalize and optimize the structure
  10. Make the AI think and sound like an expert, not just follow steps

“The trick to creating effective skills is to make your AI think like an expert, not just to follow steps.”
— Greg sharing James’ advice (31:30)

9. Iterating and Editing Skills

• After real-world use, you can edit your .skill for improvements.
• Skills should evolve as your needs change and you learn more about what works.

“Once you've created your first skill, skills aren't something you aren't making better over time. So as you see the output... you can just go in and edit it and add to it and change it and iterate from there.”
— Greg (33:00)

10. Closing Advice & Next Steps

• Start simple: Create your first skill today.
• Then, iterate as you observe results.
• Consider using Claude Skills beyond web—incorporate into terminal workflows for ultimate flexibility.
• Greg invites feedback, interaction, and suggests further episodes if listeners want to go deeper, especially with experts like James.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On simplicity and approachability:
  “I’m not going to be using Claude code. I’m just going to be using a website or if you want to just have the Mac app.” (00:34)
• On the business potential:
  “The point here is it's done an incredible job here... But I saw a tweet from my friend 'boring marketer' this morning and he said something that's really smart about how you can get the most out of Claude skills.” (29:59)
• On democratizing AI workflows:
  “This is, this is the Startup Ideas podcast, and it's about how you can get those ideas out of your head and actually create something that people love.” (35:30)

Key Timestamps

• 00:10 — Why use Claude Skills?
• 02:00 — Enabling and starting your first Skill
• 05:30 — Walking through example: Conversion Copywriting Review Skill
• 12:50 — Skills vs. Projects explained
• 15:10 — How Skill file structures work (Markdown)
• 23:00 — Testing the skill on a real app (Calai)
• 29:59 — Iterating on skills, expert best practices
• 33:00 — Editing and evolving your custom skills
• 35:30 — Closing thoughts and practical encouragement

Summary Takeaway

This episode offers a hands-on, jargon-free roadmap to getting started with Claude Skills, making the process approachable for anyone—especially founders, creators, and non-coders. Greg’s walkthrough and candid commentary demystify the setup and improvement process, exemplifying how you can transform Claude into a tailored, high-performing teammate for your business or creative projects.

If you want more actionable startup ideas and practical AI guides, subscribe and leave feedback—Greg is eager to interact with listeners and enrich future episodes with your questions!