Planning and design

Start with use cases

Before writing any code, identify 2-3 concrete use cases your skill should enable.

Good use case definition:

Use Case: Project Sprint Planning
Trigger: User says "help me plan this sprint" or "create
sprint tasks"
Steps:
1. Fetch current project status from Linear (via MCP)
2. Analyze team velocity and capacity
3. Suggest task prioritization
4. Create tasks in Linear with proper labels and estimates
Result: Fully planned sprint with tasks created

Ask yourself:

• • What does a user want to accomplish?
• • What multi-step workflows does this require?
• • Which tools are needed (built-in or MCP?)
• • What domain knowledge or best practices should be embedded?

Common skill use case categories

At Anthropic, we've observed three common use cases:

Category 1: Document & Asset Creation

Used for: Creating consistent, high-quality output including documents, presentations, apps, designs, code, etc.

Real example: frontend-design skill (also see skills for docx, pptx, xlsx, and ppt )

"Create distinctive, production-grade frontend interfaces with high design quality. Use when building web components, pages, artifacts, posters, or applications."

Key techniques:

• • Embedded style guides and brand standards
• • Template structures for consistent output
• • Quality checklists before finalizing
• • No external tools required - uses Claude's built-in capabilities