TOOLS & SKILLS
New To Claude? Do These 5 Things First, Part 2 🛠️
You commented TOOLKIT, so here is the setup for all five. One reusable Skill, a scheduled task, a published artifact, a plugin, and the Chrome extension. Exact.
Part one set Claude up to know you. Part two sets Claude up to do work.
Part one covered the five that make Claude useful on day one: get the desktop app, fill out your personal instructions, connect your tools, learn to switch models, and create one Project. Do those first. Everything below assumes they are done.
These five turn Claude from something you talk to into something that runs. They are also the five people quit on, because every article explains what they are and never says where to click.
So this is the setup, not the explainer. Each one gets the exact path, the plan you need, your first real run, and the mistake that makes it fail. Where I already wrote the deep guide, I link it.
Create One Reusable Skill
A Skill is a set of instructions Claude loads when the job matches. Write it once, stop re-explaining yourself. The full breakdown, plus how the skill-creator interview works, is in this guide. Here is only how to get one live.
What plan you need: Pro and up. Anthropic's help center also lists Free, but their developer docs say Pro and above for uploading your own, so assume you need Pro.
The route that needs no terminal. Anthropic's own tutorial. You build the Skill by talking to Claude.
- Open a normal chat and say what you want. "I want to create a skill for quarterly business reviews." Swap in your thing. Client onboarding. Weekly recaps. Proposal drafts.
- Upload anything it should follow. Templates, past examples, brand guidelines. People skip this step, and it is the one that makes the Skill sound like you instead of like a robot.
- Answer the clarifying questions properly. The Skill is only as good as those answers.
- Claude writes the file and packages it. Save it.
- Go to Settings, Capabilities, Skills and toggle it on.
- Test it. Ask for the thing it was built for.
Where Skills live: Customize, then Skills in the left sidebar. Direct link is claude.ai/settings/capabilities. For pre-built ones: Customize, Skills, the "+" button, then "Browse skills." Honest note, Anthropic keeps moving this menu and their own pages disagree. If Skills are not under Customize, check Settings, Capabilities.
If you use Claude Code: no menu, files only. Personal skills go in ~/.claude/skills/your-skill-name/SKILL.md, project skills in .claude/skills/your-skill-name/SKILL.md. Run one by typing /your-skill-name. Important: the folder name is what you type, not the name inside the file. Match them and save yourself an hour.
Do not test with "use my skill." Ask for the work like you normally would. "Draft the quarterly review for the Nolan account."
Then watch Claude's thinking for "Using [skill name]." That is your proof it fired. No line, no Skill, and you are just getting regular Claude with extra steps.
Set Up A Scheduled Task
This is the one that makes Claude work while you are asleep. It is called Scheduled tasks.
The exact path:
- Go to claude.ai and open the Home tab.
- In the message box, select "Cowork" at the bottom left.
- Click "Scheduled" in the left sidebar.
- Click "New task" in the upper right.
- Pick "Create with Claude" and it asks multiple-choice questions and builds the task for you. Or pick "Set up manually" and fill in task name, prompt, approval mode, frequency, and optionally a model and a folder.
Shortcut: type /schedule in any Cowork session. More on schedule syntax and running unattended in this guide and this one.
Your frequency options are: hourly, daily, weekly, on weekdays, or manually. "Manually" means it only runs when you press the button, which is more useful than it sounds.
The part that surprises people: scheduled tasks run remotely. Your computer does not need to be awake and the app does not need to be open. That is different from what a lot of older posts still say. Close the laptop. It still runs.
The Scheduled page shows upcoming and past runs, and lets you edit, pause, resume, delete, or run a task now.
Use Anthropic's own example: "Summarize Slack messages, emails, or calendar events from the past 24 hours." Set it to daily. That is the task that earns its keep in week one.
The other one worth building is a weekly report: "Compile data from Google Drive, spreadsheets, or connected tools into a formatted summary." Pick the day you actually need it, which is the morning before your team meeting, not Friday afternoon.
Build An Artifact And Publish It
Building artifacts is covered in this guide and this one, so the build part here is short. The half nobody covers is publishing, which turns a thing on your screen into a link you send a client.
Plans, and read this one carefully:
| Plan | Can build artifacts | Can publish publicly |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Yes | Yes |
| Pro | Yes | Yes |
| Max | Yes | Yes |
| Team | Yes | No, sharing stays inside your organization |
| Enterprise | Yes | No, sharing stays inside your organization |
Yes, that is backwards. A Free account can publish, a company Enterprise account cannot. Also: artifacts are not on mobile. Do this one at a desktop.
To build one: click "Artifacts" in your sidebar, which signals what you are after. Describe the problem you want solved, not the code you want written. Let Claude ask clarifying questions. Then say "Can you create this for me?" It builds in a window right of the chat. Claude makes an artifact when content is significant and self-contained, usually over 15 lines, so tiny asks stay in the chat.
To publish it:
- Go to the artifact.
- Check you are on the correct version. Artifacts keep every version and you publish the one you are on.
- Click "Publish" and copy the link.
Whoever you send it to needs no Claude account to open it or use it. Two more buttons. "Customize" lets other Claude users remix it into their own copy while yours stays untouched. "Get embed code" appears after publishing so you can drop it into your own site, and it needs an "Allowed domains" list, comma separated.
A pricing calculator for your services. An intake form for new clients. A quiz that sorts people into the right package. Anything you rebuild by hand every time.
Build it, publish it, send the link to one person and watch them use it. That loop, build to link to someone else's screen, is the point. Most people build ten artifacts and send none.
Add A Plugin
Anthropic's own line is the clearest one: "Each plugin bundles skills, connectors, and sub-agents into a single package, so you get a ready-to-go setup from your first conversation."
If those three words blur together, here is the difference in one table. Keep it.
| Thing | What it is | Think of it as |
|---|---|---|
| Skill | One capability, one set of instructions | A single recipe |
| Connector | A link to an outside service | The pipe to your data |
| Plugin | Skills plus connectors plus sub-agents, bundled | The whole kit for a role |
What plan you need: any paid plan. Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise. Not on Free.
To install one in the app: open "Customize" in the left sidebar, select the "Plugins" tab, click "Browse plugins," then "Install." The Knowledge Work marketplace is added by default, so there is something to browse on day one. You can also add Anthropic's Financial Services, Legal, and Life Sciences marketplaces. To add one from GitHub: Customize, Plugins, Personal plugins, "+", "Add marketplace," "Add from a repository," then paste the repo or git URL. Full catalog at claude.com/plugins.
In Claude Code: type /plugin for a four-tab panel: Discover, Installed, Marketplaces, Errors. Install with /plugin install name@claude-plugins-official. Add a marketplace with /plugin marketplace add owner/repo. Install mid-session and you must run /reload-plugins or it sits there doing nothing.
Picking the right plugin for your job is covered in the plugins guide, and the ten I actually use are in this one.
Install one plugin that matches what you did last Tuesday. Then, in a new conversation, hand it a real task from your week. Not a test question.
Judge it on one thing: did it change the output, or just sit there? A plugin that does not visibly change how Claude answers is not helping. Uninstall it, try another.
Download The Chrome Extension
This is the one almost nobody has installed, and it is the one that changes your day the most.
It is called Claude in Chrome. In the Chrome Web Store the listing is titled just "Claude," published by Anthropic. Check that publisher name before you install anything.
it is in beta, there is no waitlist, and it works on all paid plans: Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise. It is Chrome only. Not Edge, not Brave, not Arc, not mobile.
The install, start to finish:
- Open Chrome. It has to be Chrome.
- Go to the Claude listing on the Chrome Web Store
- Click "Add to Chrome."
- Sign in with your Claude account. The one you already pay for.
- Pin it. Click the puzzle piece icon in your Chrome toolbar and pin Claude. Skip this and you will forget it exists.
- Grant permissions when it asks.
What it can actually do, which is far more than "chat about this page":
- Read the page you are on, including the text you would have to scroll for.
- Click buttons, type, and fill out forms for you.
- Navigate between pages on its own, and take screenshots.
- Open, close and switch tabs, and manage several at once.
- Read the browser console, a gift if you are debugging your own site.
- Download files and record workflows so you can repeat them.
- Run scheduled tasks and work with Claude Code.
Now the safety part, and do not skim it. This is an AI with hands on your browser. Anthropic built real limits in, and you should know where they are.
- Blocked outright: adult content sites and known pirated content sites. Claude will not go there.
- Permission required: Claude asks before it touches financial sites.
- Confirmation required: for high-risk actions like downloading a file or entering sensitive information, it stops and asks you first.
- Flat out forbidden: stock trading or investment transactions, bypassing captchas, inputting sensitive data, and gathering or scraping facial images.
- Every action gets checked for risk and for hidden malicious instructions before it runs. That matters, because a shady site can hide text designed to hijack an AI reading it.
One note: browser interactions are more compute-intensive than regular chats, so the extension eats more of your limit. Save it for tasks worth the spend.
Pick one of these three. Fill out an application you have typed the same answers into before. Enter information into your CRM after a call, the job everyone puts off until Friday. Or book something, a table, an appointment, a flight search.
Start with the CRM one. It is repetitive, the data is already in front of you, and you will know in ninety seconds whether this changes your week. Watch the first run all the way through. You are learning what it does well before you trust it with anything.
The Order I Would Do Them In
Five things is a lot for one sitting, so do not do one sitting. Here is the order that gets you a win fastest.
- Flip the code execution toggle in Settings, Capabilities. Thirty seconds, unlocks two of the five.
- Install Claude in Chrome and do one CRM entry or one form. Fastest payoff on the list.
- Build one Skill by talking to Claude about the thing you explain over and over.
- Publish one artifact and send the link to one person.
- Install one plugin and give it a real task in a fresh chat.
- Set one scheduled task, the daily briefing, if Cowork has reached your plan yet.
One a day for a week and you are done. That puts you past where almost anyone gets with this tool, because most people stop at typing questions in a box.
The real unlock of AI agents is not full autonomy, but human-in-the-loop systems design. Structure your agent inputs with explicit constraints, negative prompts, and automated test checkpoints. When building tools, keep token consumption lean by caching system prompts and isolating tasks into specialized sub-agents.