Resources

People often ask me "How did you learn how to hack?" The answer: by reading. This page is a collection of the blog posts and other articles that I have accumulated over the years of my journey. Enjoy!

Claude Skills are becoming bigger and bigger. This article details how to write good Claude skills from people using them internally at Anthropic. They break it down into nine different categories.... library API references, production verification, data/analysis, business automation, scaffolding/templates, code review, CI/CD deployment, incidient runbooks and infrastructure ops.

The first tip is to NOT state the obvious. If something is default then Claude already knows it. Skills that improve on Claude's base knowledge, after trial and error, are great. Another item is a basic gotchas section. These are built in common failure points that Claude runs into when using the skill; these should be updated over time.

Claude skills aren't just markdown files anymore; they are a folder of information. You can tell Claude what files are in a skill and when to read specific information. This progressive disclosure limits the usage of context while giving Claude all of the information that it needs. Some skills include built-in memory by having log files, JSON files or even a SQLite database.

Giving Claude scripts and libraries to use can make it even more powerful. This is great for complex analysis, custom calls that are require and much more. Hooks are code that is always ran at deterministic times. The more deterministic Claude can be with user created code, the better.

They also say to be careful about being too prescriptive. Claude is smart and can adapt to many situations. Their example of being too prescriptive is having step by step instructions to complete simple tasks. A good article on using Claude skills more effectively.