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AIWR Tutorial · Updated August 2026
What a skill is, and how to install one.
No coding, no terminal, no subscription to anything new. If you can download a file and find a settings menu, you can install a skill — and it will change how your AI reads your pages for good.
The Basics
A skill is a set of instructions your AI keeps.
When you paste a long instruction into a chat — read this as an editor, quote the actual lines, don't rewrite my prose — it works for that conversation and then it's gone. Next week you paste it again, slightly differently, and get a slightly different result.
A skill is that instruction, saved. You install it once. From then on it sits quietly in the background, and the AI pulls it up on its own when the work matches. Ask for help with a messy draft and the draft-reading skill activates without you asking for it by name.
Each skill has two parts doing two different jobs. A short description says what it does and when to use it — that's the part the AI reads constantly to decide whether this skill is relevant. Then the instructions — the actual method, sometimes several pages of it — load only once the skill is triggered. That's why you can install a dozen skills without slowing anything down.
Skills are not a writing tool that generates prose. Ours are the opposite: they constrain the AI, telling it to quote your material rather than replace it, to name a problem rather than fix it, and to leave the decisions with you.
The File
An .md file is just text with light formatting.
.md stands for Markdown. It is a plain text file — the same thing as a .txt — with a few punctuation conventions that stand in for formatting. A # at the start of a line makes a heading. Asterisks make a bulleted list. That's most of it.
There is nothing hidden in it and nothing that can run on your computer. Double-click it and it opens in TextEdit, Notepad, or whatever editor you already use. If it opens in a browser instead, drag it into your text editor.
Every skill is built around one file named SKILL.md. It opens with a small block fenced by three dashes — the frontmatter — carrying the name and the description. Everything after that block is the instructions, written in ordinary English:
---
name: read-the-draft
description: "Diagnose a complete or partial draft before revision
begins. Use for fiction, memoir, essays, narrative nonfiction,
scripts, or other creative work when a writer wants an
evidence-based reading of structure, scene function, voice,
pacing, orientation, patterns, promises, or the gap between
intended and actual effect..."
---
# Read the Draft
Read the draft as evidence. Determine what is actually happening
on the page before prescribing changes...That is the whole format. You can open any of our six, read every word, and edit anything you disagree with — change the time budget, add a genre you write in, cut a section. It is your file.
The Download
What's inside the zip.
Each download is a zip file containing one folder. Both Claude and ChatGPT expect exactly this shape — a folder with SKILL.md inside it, rather than a loose SKILL.md — so download the zip and upload it as it is. There is no need to unzip it first.
read-the-draft.zip
└── read-the-draft/
├── SKILL.md ← the instructions
├── agents/
│ └── openai.yaml ← display name + starter prompt (ChatGPT)
└── assets/
└── icon.svg ← the tile art (ChatGPT)The openai.yaml file and the icon are small extras that ChatGPT reads: a display name, a suggested starter prompt, and the artwork on the skill's tile. Claude ignores both and works from SKILL.md alone. Nothing in any of these files connects to the internet or runs code.
Installing
Into Claude
Custom skills on claude.ai are available on the Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, with code execution turned on in your settings. They are per-user: each person on a team installs their own.
Download the skill
From the skills page, pick one and download the zip. Leave it zipped.
Open your skill settings
In Claude, go to Settings and find the Skills section (listed under Features or Capabilities depending on your plan and how recently the interface updated).
Upload the zip
Choose the option to add or upload a skill and select the zip file you downloaded. Claude reads the SKILL.md and shows you the skill's name and description so you can confirm it's the right one.
Check that it's enabled
New skills appear in the same list with a toggle. Make sure yours is on. That's the whole install — nothing to restart.
Using Claude Code instead?
Skip the upload. Unzip the folder into ~/.claude/skills/ for yourself, or .claude/skills/ inside a project to share it with collaborators. Claude Code finds it on the filesystem.
Worth knowing: skills don't sync between surfaces. One you upload to claude.ai isn't available in Claude Code, and vice versa — install it in each place you write.
Anthropic's current documentation: Using Skills in Claude and the Agent Skills overview.
Installing
Into ChatGPT
ChatGPT follows the same open Agent Skills standard, so the identical download works in both products. Skills are available on the Business, Enterprise, Healthcare, and Edu plans, and have reached personal Plus accounts — OpenAI's help center still lists only the business plans, so the rollout is running ahead of the documentation. On Enterprise and Edu workspaces an administrator controls whether members can use and upload them.
Download the skill
The same zip you would use for Claude. Leave it zipped.
Open the Skills tab
In the sidebar, select Plugins. In the Plugin Directory, select the Skills tab. You'll see what's installed, what you've created, and anything shared with you.
Create → Upload from your computer
Choose Create, then Upload from your computer, and select the zip.
Wait for the scan
ChatGPT scans every uploaded skill before it becomes available. Most clear immediately. Some are marked Needs Review, which means reading a little more information before you can use it; anything flagged as a risk is marked Blocked. The scan is not a substitute for reading a skill yourself.
Desktop and web are separate
As in Claude, personal skills don't sync across surfaces: a skill added on the desktop app has to be added again on web and mobile. Same file, one more upload.
OpenAI's current documentation: Skills in ChatGPT. Menus in both products move around as these features mature — if what you see doesn't match the steps above, the vendor's own help page will be current.
After Installing
You mostly don't have to think about it.
Paste your pages, say what you want, and the right skill activates on its own — that's what the description is for. Most of the time the only visible difference is that the response is better.
When you want a specific one, name it. Any of these will do it, with your pages pasted underneath:
Use Find What's Alive to find what is worth keeping in these rough notes.
Use Read the Draft to diagnose this draft before I begin revising it.
Use Keep the Voice to build a voice guide from my best writing and audit this revision.
Use Read It Two Ways to give this passage two independent readings and map the differences.
Use Give Useful Feedback to help me respond constructively to this writer's draft.
Use Sort the Feedback to organize these comments into a revision plan I can evaluate.
One habit worth forming: give it the actual pages, not a summary of them. Every one of these skills works by quoting your material back to you, and it cannot quote what it hasn't seen.
Troubleshooting
If it goes wrong
The upload was rejected
Almost always the zip got rebuilt somewhere along the way. Both products want a zip whose root contains the skill folder. If you unzipped it and re-zipped the loose files, SKILL.md ends up at the top level and the upload fails. Download a fresh copy and upload it untouched. In ChatGPT, note that Needs Review is not a rejection — it means reading a bit more before the skill turns on.
There's no Skills option at all
On Claude, custom skills need a Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise plan with code execution enabled. On ChatGPT, look under Plugins rather than the top level of the sidebar — the Skills tab lives inside the Plugin Directory. If it isn't there at all, skills may not have reached your plan yet. On Enterprise and Edu, an admin separately controls whether members can use skills and whether they can upload their own, so if the tab is there but uploading isn't, that's the permission to ask about.
It installed but never seems to fire
Check the toggle is on, then ask for it by name using one of the lines above. If it activates when named but not on its own, your request probably didn't look like a match — the AI decides based on the description, so being concrete about the task helps.
It rewrote my draft anyway
Say so, plainly: don't rewrite anything — go back and follow the skill. These skills are written to diagnose rather than revise, and a nudge usually puts it back on the method.
Going Further
Write your own.
The fastest way in is to modify one of ours. Open the SKILL.md, change what you'd change, rename the folder and the name field, zip the folder, upload it. That's a new skill.
Two rules worth knowing. The name must be lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. And spend your effort on the description: it is the only part the AI reads when deciding whether to reach for the skill, so it must say both what the skill does and when it applies. A vague description means a skill that never fires.
Beyond that, write it the way you'd brief a sharp assistant on their first week — what to do, what to hand back, and what not to touch.
A note on trust
Installing a skill gives an AI new instructions, and a skill from a source you don't know can tell it to do things you wouldn't want. Read before you install — ours are plain text with no scripts, and you can read every line on this site before downloading anything.