The Brick-by-Brick Revolution: Why I’m Skill-ifying Everything in Claude Code

How Claude Skills helps me turn repetitive work into reusable intelligence.

I remember reading Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence around a decade ago, and one analogy I keep returning to: AGI will be created brick by brick. We won’t know when the wall is complete until suddenly, it is. The idea is that we’re building narrowly intelligent systems, each mastering one specific domain, until eventually we’ll have intelligence that excels at everything narrowly. Then some breakthrough will connect them all.

Claude Skills completely validates this vision. Each skill is a brick.

Three weeks ago, Anthropic released Skills, and I’ve been in a productive frenzy ever since. While most founders are still debating whether AI will take their jobs, I’m skill-ifying every repetitive cognitive task in my company, laying down brick after brick of narrow intelligence. Client updates that took 3 hours of herding cats? Now 2 minutes. Investor reports that required chasing down six different team members? Claude goes straight to GitHub and tells me what actually shipped. Style guide compliance that we’d catch (maybe) in PR reviews? Now enforced automatically before code even hits review.

Yet when I talk to other founders, most haven’t even heard of Skills or they dismiss them as “just another automation tool.”

They’re missing the revolution hiding in plain sight.

The intelligence assembly line

Here’s what’s actually happening: we’re building the narrow intelligence modules that Bostrom predicted, except they’re not locked in research labs, they’re sitting in ~/.claude/skills/ folders on our machines.

Each skill is a brick of specialized intelligence. The breakthrough? Claude itself, a general-purpose LLM that can dynamically load and connect these bricks as needed. This is fundamentally different from anything we’ve had before.

Skills aren’t slash commands (those are user-invoked, requiring you to remember /command exists and manually trigger it every time).

They’re not subagents either (those are like hiring temporary contractors, they spawn as separate AI instances, work in isolation without seeing your conversation context, complete their specific task, then disappear. You need to explicitly delegate to them and manage their coordination).

Skills are something entirely new: modular intelligence that Claude automatically recognizes and loads when relevant. Think of Claude as the mortar that holds the bricks together, it understands context, recognizes patterns, and seamlessly activates the right narrow intelligence at the right moment.

The magic is in the integration. When I ask Claude to write a product update for a client, it doesn’t just follow a template. It recognizes the task, loads my client-update skill (brick #1), might reference my code-standards skill to explain technical decisions (brick #2), and could pull from my metrics-dashboard skill for KPIs (brick #3). The LLM is the breakthrough that connects these bespoke narrow intelligences.

This isn’t actually AGI, let’s be clear. But it’s the closest practical implementation we have. And here’s the kicker: imagine when Skills become shareable through an app store-like model. Suddenly, you’re not just building your own wall of intelligence, you’re contributing to a collective one. Your invoice-processing skill becomes a brick someone else can use. Their data-visualization skill becomes one you can adopt. We’re creating a marketplace of narrow intelligences that any LLM can orchestrate.

This is the wall being built in real-time. And unlike the monolithic AGI we’ve been promised, this one is modular, controllable, and happening right now. It’s distributed intelligence assembly that we actually control.

Build your first brick

Let me show you exactly how simple this is. A Claude Skill is just a folder with a markdown file. That’s it.

Here’s the bare minimum structure:

~/.claude/skills/
└── your-skill-name/
    └── SKILL.md

The SKILL.md file needs just a few things in its YAML frontmatter. Here’s an example skill called “email-writer” that drafts professional emails:

---
name: email-writer
description: Writes professional emails. Triggers when user asks to write, draft, or compose emails.
---

# Instructions

Write clear, professional emails that:
- Get to the point quickly
- Use appropriate tone for the context
- Include a clear call-to-action
```

That `description` field is critical—it’s how Claude decides when to activate your skill. Make it specific and include trigger phrases.

But here’s where it gets interesting. You can include reference files that turn Claude into a domain expert:
```
email-writer/
├── SKILL.md
├── references/
│   ├── templates.md         # Email templates for different situations
│   ├── tone-guide.md        # How to adjust tone (formal, casual, urgent)
│   └── signatures.md        # Your standard email signatures
└── scripts/
    └── check_grammar.py     # Executable code for grammar checking

That description field is critical, it’s how Claude decides when to activate your skill. Make it specific and include trigger phrases.

But here’s where it gets interesting. You can include reference files that turn Claude into a domain expert:

When writing emails:
1. Check `references/templates.md` for similar email types
2. Apply tone guidelines from `references/tone-guide.md`
3. Add appropriate signature from `references/signatures.md`

Claude will read these files when the skill activates, instantly gaining all your preferences and standards. This simple email example scales to any domain, from code reviews to recipe generation to financial analysis.

Installation is stupidly simple:

1. Create a folder called skills inside ~/.claude/

2. Drop your skill folder inside

3. There is no step 3

Claude automatically discovers and loads skills from:

• ~/.claude/skills/ (personal skills)

• .claude/skills/ (project-specific skills)

• Any skills installed via plugins

What skills can (and can’t) do

Skills excel at:

• Repetitive cognitive tasks with clear patterns

• Enforcing standards and best practices

• Synthesizing information from multiple sources

• Applying complex, domain-specific logic

• Maintaining consistency across time and projects

Skills struggle with:

• Tasks requiring real-time external data (without additional tools)

• Highly creative, unprecedented problems

• Decisions requiring human judgment on ethics or strategy

• Anything requiring persistent memory between sessions

The sweet spot? Tasks where you’ve developed a clear process but execution is tedious. If you’ve ever written a how-to document for your team, you can probably skill-ify it.

Examples of my current skill arsenal

At my agency, we’re building skills for:

Engineering Standards:

• component-library-enforcer: Ensures all UI components come from our design system

• unit-test-standards: Writes tests following our specific patterns and coverage requirements

• pr-reviewer: Pre-reviews code for common issues before human review

Communication:

• investor-update: Transforms GitHub activity into polished monthly updates

• client-report: Generates weekly progress reports with appropriate technical depth

Product Management:

• feature-spec: Turns rough ideas into properly formatted specifications

• user-story-writer: Generates user stories with our specific acceptance criteria format

• roadmap-analyzer: Applies my fitness landscape framework to evaluate our product direction

Each skill saves at least a few hours per week. Multiply that across a team, and we’re talking about reclaiming entire roles worth of time.

The compound effect

We’re building institutional intelligence that lasts beyond any one person. When someone leaves, their expertise stays in Skills. When someone joins, they can work at the level of your top performer on day one.

Each skill you create is a brick. Most people don’t realize this, but Skills are already shareable. Claude Code has a plugin marketplace. Anthropic publishes skills on GitHub. You can export and share .skill files with your team today.

This is only the beginning. Soon there will be a full marketplace with thousands of specialized skills you can install with a click. Your invoice-processing skill becomes a brick someone else can use. Their visualization skill becomes one you can adopt.

This isn’t about creating some giant intelligence. It’s about building modular systems you actually control.

Pick your most annoying weekly task. Document it. Turn it into a skill. Save yourself hours.

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