Question 1

What is skill engineering?

Accepted Answer

Skill engineering is the discipline of building structured, reusable AI skills - the next evolution of prompt engineering. Unlike one-off prompts, skills are portable, maintainable behavioral modules that encode domain expertise for consistent reuse across sessions and platforms.

Question 2

What is a Claude skill?

Accepted Answer

A Claude skill is a reusable set of instructions, examples, templates, and domain knowledge that transforms Claude from a generalist into a specialist for a specific task or workflow. Skills are structured as SKILL.md files and are portable across Claude apps, Claude Code, and the Anthropic API.

Question 3

What are Claude Skills 2.0?

Accepted Answer

Skills 2.0 is Anthropic's advanced skill specification supporting bundled slash commands, subagent execution contexts, lifecycle hooks, and YAML frontmatter for rich configuration. It enables deterministic, composable AI agent behaviors.

Question 4

How do I install a skill from Claude Skills Market?

Accepted Answer

Browse /browse-skills or /free-skills, copy the skill description, and paste it into Claude. For Skills 2.0 with npx install support, use the command: npx skills add [author/skill-name]

Question 5

Is Claude Skills Market free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Browsing, submitting, voting, and commenting are completely free. The full 14-week skill engineering course including labs, quizzes, and certificate is also free with no credit card required.

API Design Principles