Transcription
Right now, skills are the most important thing you can learn inside of Claude. In this video, I'm going to walk you through my three-step skill framework that I use to automate any task in my business. I'm going to start with the basics. I'm going to break down the framework step by step so you can understand the mental model behind automating tasks and organizing your folder structures. And then I'm going to build two automations live on screen so you can watch the process from start to finish for how an actual business owner who uses this stuff every day is going through this process.
All right, let's get right into it. First, let me go over the anatomy of a skill and I'm going to break down a skill using the DBS framework, which is my three-step framework that I use to automate tasks in Claude. You don't need the framework to automate tasks in Claude. I just think it helps make things a lot more useful. So, let's break down what a skill is.
If you haven't learned what a skill is yet and you're starting from complete scratch, I highly recommend watching that video I've got in the upper right hand corner where I break down skills for beginners and what it is and I go very in-depth for about an hour and how to build skills.
Now, the easiest way to break down what skills are is just thinking about a skill like folders and files. So, at the very top you have your skill folder. This is whatever your automation is called and within that lies the contents to actually run an automation for you using Claude. And this is the structure that Claude likes to see in order to have that skill file extension. This isn't just some madeup term, a skill. A Claude skill is an actual file extension that Claude and other tools use in order to run automations with agents. So this is what every skill looks like. It needs a skill.md file. This is required. This gives your automation direction. This tells it what to do. And this is the only required file. So within your automation folder or your skill folder rather, this is one file that will need to be in place for every single automation you create. I'm going to show you how to use Clawude to create these. You're not going to be putting these in yourself. I'm just trying to break down the hierarchy from an overhead view. So the skill MD contains the name of the skill, the description, and the step-by-step workflow. So step one, check Google Calendar. Step two, check my CRM. Step three, use all of those details and send an email, whatever. Right? It's a step-by-step workflow for how the automation should run in order. and it contains the rules.
The next folder of the framework is the references folder. Now, the references folder are blueprints for how you do things like your voice, your brand, data examples. These are static files Claude uses every single run. Uh, so you have your step-by-step workflow in the skill MD. And in that step-by-step workflow, you might say, "Use my brand guide in the references folder and fetch my brand colors." Right? Right. And then step three is make a LinkedIn post and a image using all those files.
And finally, we have scripts. And scripts are code that Claude can execute in order to do things that Claude can't do with just natural language. So this is like calling external tools and APIs, formatting things, math calculations that would take Claude sometimes, you know, 30 minutes to do that it could do in two seconds because code runs instantly and Claude takes a while to think through things and like actually generate tokens. So scripts are for efficiency and advanced calculations and calling external APIs.
And so I like thinking of these things in three different ways. So number one is the skillmd file. That's your direction. So that's the D in the DBS framework that we're going to be covering today. References are blueprints for how you get things done. So that's going to be the B. And then scripts are solutions for anything that Claude can't just do by itself. So that's the S. And so combined we have the DBS framework which is the framework I use to automate tasks in my business using claude. So direction blueprints and solutions. This is what is within the automation or the skill folder that Claude's going to use.
So today we're going to be using that same framework and building two completely different skills. And like I said the framework isn't a necessity in order to build automations with Claude. It's just a nice to have. It's a good way to organize stuff so that you know exactly what's going in, exactly what's coming out, and exactly what you need in order to execute a successful automation. So, let's get into it. I want to show you where skills are and what ones to activate and which ones to install in order to start creating automations with ease. This can be done in a couple of minutes. It's super simple to get set up.
So, for today's video, I'm going to be using Claude Desktop for building everything. And specifically, I'm going to be using Claude Co-work. So skills are found in the customize tab over in the lefth hand sidebar. You can select that customize button. What you want to do is select skills and within here you're going to be able to see all of the skills that Claude has provided you out of the box in examples and all of your skills up here. The presentation that I just gave you was actually created with an automation. I told Claude, "Hey, I'm filming a video about Claude skills using my DBS framework. Create me a presentation I can show the audience." That took me 30 seconds to generate that beautiful presentation. And since Claude knows everything about me and I run my business out of here, it uh can generate those things pretty quick.
So before you actually create skills, there are some things you need to do. You need to go here and ensure that the skill creator skill is turned on because this is going to help Claude help you create skills and automations. It's super easy to create automations using the skill creator because you just tell Claude what you want automated with natural language. You connect some tools and then it just does it for you. The next thing you can do is activate the DBS framework skill. And this is the framework that I've given you uh that I went over in the presentation that I use uh for direction blueprints and solutions. The three layers that uh structure out your skill folder. So Claude is going to help you create the skill folder. But this is going to help you structure your folder with the references, the scripts, and the skill MD file. I highly recommend you install this. I left a resource down in the description. And when you access that resource, you can go down here and download the DBS framework skill. I'll just hit this download button. And then once you have it downloaded, you can just hit this plus button and then select upload a skill. And when you select upload a skill, you can just drag that folder right here. It should be a zip file and then it will download the DBS framework skill to your Claude account and you can activate that as well because this is going to allow you to create a very well ststructured skill.
But now what we're going to do is we're going to create some automations using Claude skills and it's going to be two separate worlds. So, we got the blue collar group and we've got the white collar group. So, like knowledge work and construction work. My dad's in construction. I know how it is. He comes home after a long day of going under crawl spaces, fixing bathrooms, doing remodels, but then he comes home and he's got to do admin work as well, like proposals, invoices, and all of that crap. So, the first automation I want to create live with you is to show you a real world example of creating a proposal generator. And this could work for any business, but I'm going to do it for a real in-person business. So, I'm going to make it as easy as possible for someone to come in and create a proposal. And this is just one task that you could knock off your entire admin list forever if you just sit down and do it in one night. And so, we're going to create a proposal generator for our first skill.
And so, whenever you want to create a skill, just type out a prompt similar to this. Tell Claude that you want to create a skill around something. For instance, I say, I want to create a skill that allows me to create proposals for a construction company. This construction company isn't really a massive enterprise thing. It's just a single handyman trying to get more work done. I want him to be able to come in here, speak the project into Claude and have it create a nicely formatted documented proposal with pricing estimates and everything all laid out just after some rough notes. Then I say I want it to be downloadable so that he can send the client an email with that proposal or a text message or whatever. I can say the branding of this handyman should be red and black. Maybe I can add in some colors there too. So that the document that gets generated on the side in clawed artifacts is actually branded in the way I want it to as well. I can say sans serif font for professionalism. And now I can send that off. So I've got my styling. I've got my main idea. And the beautiful thing about co-working right now, you got to get in co-work because it's so good is it's going to start tracking progress over here on the side. Co-work thinks in steps. It thinks in tasks. And you can see the tasks working step by step. And so as you can see, it says, "Let me read the relevant skills files first to understand how to build this properly. It's not just going to start randomly building an automation for you." It says, "Good context. Let me read the DBS framework." So the thing that we just installed and the skill creator skill in order to uh produce an output. And so over in the context, it's loading in skills that it can actually reference and use in order to help us create skills. And also another really good thing about co-work is you can have it ask you question and answers. So if it doesn't understand something about what you're trying to create, it's going to ask a question about it.
As you can see, it says, "What's the handyman's business's name or a placeholder name to use?" I will just call this um Drake Srirach Construction. Maybe I'm running a construction company. I'll send that off. What type of projects should the pricing estimates cover? So now Claude is running us through this step by step in order to discover more about how the automation should actually work for us. And it does this whenever you create a skill. It goes through kind of this process of asking you what the skill should be about and then testing it, making sure it works, and then delivering it to you and asking for feedback or if you want anything changed. You're going to see that kind of happen live. So it says, "What types of projects should the estimates cover?" I will just say both general handyman and renovation focused. It says, "How should the pricing work in the proposal?" I will just put rough estimate range. Actually, you know what? I'll put both line item breakdown and rough estimate range because the good thing about AI is it's amazing at getting you 80% of the way there. And then you can just finish off the 20%. That's crucial. It says, "What info should the handyman speak into Claude to generate a proposal?" And then I want it to just be minimal info, right? I can just actually say like rough notes almost like they are speaking into a phone about what the client wants. And then I said sometimes there will be dimensions and specifics but mostly pretty general and rough notes. I'll send that off. And now it just gathered all the context it needs in order to start creating this for us. And the good thing is is it's iterative. It's not just going to create it for us and say here you go be on your way. It's going to ask us for feedback. It's going to run two to three realistic tests for us and evaluate the performance of the automation. And so, as you can see over on the right hand side now, we have a progress bar. And this progress bar is going to walk you through step by step what's actually happening. We've got eight steps that need to take place for this automation to be created. And now Claude's doing the work for us. We can kind of sit back, relax. This is the beautiful thing about Claude is slowly picking off these tasks one at a time. Right now, it's on step five where it's running test cases with realistic prompts that I might type in. And then it's going to generate reviews for me to actually look at the results that it generated and then say, "Yes, this was good." Or, "No, I don't really like this." So, look at all the stuff it's doing in the background. This is just insane. This is all stuff that we used to have to do manually, but AI is really good at creating automations for us if you set up your workspace in the correct way.
Okay, so it just got done running all three tests. So now it's generating those proposal PDFs that would be spawned in from those tests. And so it has a couple of different tests that it created. You can view the eval reviewer if you want. And this is going to pull up a screen where you can provide feedback to Claude based on what it generated with the prompt and with the automation activated. And so this would be like an example prompt that you would send off. Maybe you're speaking into your phone. Hey, so I just left Mrs. Johnson's place over on 415 Oak Street. She wants her whole master bathroom redone. Rip out the old tile floor. Put in some LVP new vanity and retile the shower. The bathroom is probably like 8x10. Shower is a standard tub surround. She wants to look modern, but nothing crazy expensive. Can you put together a proposal for that? So, this would be an example of a prompt that it's a very realistic example of a construction worker hopping in the car, speaking into their phone, and sending it off to Claude. And then this is what Claude generated from that. And so now we can review it by actually opening that file. I'm just going to open it in clawed for the Johnson bathroom proposal. This is what it generated for the client. Drake Sra construction project proposal gives project overview um for the master bathroom renovation using the luxury vinyl plank. And remember I just said LVP. And then it's going to start putting all of this together for me just from that little prompt that I just showed you. And this was a test that Claude ran on its own. And then you can start adding in things like your hourly rate, the mileage between you and the client, how much materials are in your area. You can have it actually do that research for you so it can pull in the live material cost. Put your markup percentage in there as well in the instructions of the actual automation and skill and then you can get a more accurate cost estimate. As you can see that range is pretty wide. But this is a pretty good proposal just for that little prompt. Now we can go through and we can look at the other examples. So maybe Tom mounting a television patching two drywall holes and painting the entire room. And so that prompt we can go back to the eval reviewer and go to the next page. This is the prompt right here that created the Tom proposal that we were just looking at. Uh, very quick, very easy, and just some quick notes that turn, you know, chaos into clarity. That one honestly looks pretty good, too. Let me look at the Garcia kitchen proposal. What you'd want to do here is actually look at the prompts that was sent off and then the proposal attached to it. But this one was a little bit more uh in-depth. So, we had seven line items and the price right down there. So, this is something like I said, you could customize this to the max. Give Claude your hourly rate. Give Claude your markup. Give Claude your packages. Maybe you run an internet business and you are doing proposals for like one-on-one coaching, group consulting, and some other things all combined. You can really get creative with this.
And now, this is the step where you actually go in and you provide revisions. So, if you don't like anything from the test examples in here, you can keep going to the next page. it will always generate an eval viewer and the assets that are created with each one of those. But if you don't like what you see in there, just tell Claude, "Hey, I don't like this about the automation. I don't like this about the proposal." And it will change it for you. But if I say something like, "I like this. This looks good to go." And I send that off, then what it's going to do is allow me to copy that automation to my skills. And and so now it's saying, let me package it up. So now after you iterate based on your feedback with Claude when you're creating these automations that can automate your tasks, it's going to package it into something you can actually copy to your Claude account. So whether you're on Claude Co-work, Claude web, it will be there in your Claude account and you can use it whenever you'd like. So now I will select copy to your skills and then I will hit manage in the upper right hand corner. And after that you can kind of see what the skill looks like. We have handyman proposal. We have the skill.md file remember which is the D in direction for the DBS framework. And then we have references which are your blueprints. So we have a pricing guide that this references and a proposal structure that this step-by-step process references. Then we have a script and this is the generate proposal script that actually creates the document. And now I can use this whenever I want, wherever I want, however I want and clawed.
So if I go and I select new task, I can do a proposal real quick. I can say like, "Hey, I've got a client. Her name is Jenna and uh she's out on Maple Street. Her entire fence uprooted from her backyard during a tornado. She's in desperate need of help. It was a cedar fence, 6 feet tall, and she needs it replaced. It's about uh 20 ft of fence by 15 ft of fence in her backyard. And uh it's all four sides, so it's 20 by 15. and we need to uh get a proposal put together for her. I do kind of want to be fair because I feel bad for her and she's a friend. So keep that in mind. But this is going to be a cedar fence 6 foot tall. And so I could say something like that, right? And I could send it off and Claude isn't just going to guess now. It has my skill in its database that we just created. And so now it's looking for all of its skills and it's saying, "Let me load the handyman proposal skill first to make sure this comes out right." And what you're going to notice is it's going to create a document in the exact same format that those example documents were created in because we just created that automation together live. And within 60 seconds, it generated that proposal for me. So now I can click into this proposal and see what it generated. You can customize this in any way you like. You can have as many pages as you'd like, different colors, different styles, whatever you want. But we have project proposal prepared for Jenna Maple Street on March 23rd. We have a project overview. We have the scope of work. We have a cost estimate down here. And then we have the timeline. Phase one, phase two, phase three, assumptions and notes, and then some terms. And so this isn't just a thing where you get what you have and then that's it. Remember, you can edit a skill, you can edit the output of the skill as well. It's all up to you. But this would be an example of creating a skill from start to finish that takes care of something like proposals for you. And I just did that very quickly. If I wasn't explaining the process, I could have created that in 5 minutes.
The really important thing to understand about this is the more customized your data is to you and your business, the better it's going to be. What you just saw me create was a very general example that anybody could pretty much implement in their business. But what's going to make it actually useful is when you put in things like your hourly rate, your location, so Claude can actually research the live prices, your competitors, so it can see what your competitors are pricing, your actual plans and packages, your tools that you have access to, both online and in the physical world. These are the things that will turn your skills and your automations from kind of useful to very useful. And it's pretty simple. Just take an hour and do it once and set it up, and then you're going to be pretty much good to go.
All right, time to move on to skill number two. In this video, we're going to create another skill together, but we're going to be doing it in a different way. I want to reverse engineer the process and create a skill after I get the result I want. So, you just saw me create a skill when I wanted a specific result and I had it in my mind of what I wanted. And then I told Claude to create an automation around something that didn't even yet exist. What I want to do is create something with Claude. I want to create an interactive analytic dashboard for my YouTube channel using my actual data. So, it's not just like fictional fake like could be things. It's going to be something that I can actually use for my business that I'm going to create live. And I'm going to create it first and then I'm going to create a skill around the process of that. So, every 28 days I can upload my YouTube metrics and then get something back to me in the exact way that I want it.
So, I'm in the back end of my YouTube and this is actually the real backend of my video content. As you can see, on March 8th, I started uploading on YouTube again. I was working on my SAS company for like nine months and it kind of distracted me from YouTube. But now I'm back and as you can see the channel is growing exponentially. So I can actually download this data and show you how I might create a nice interactive dashboard around this. And then I'm going to upload all of that data from my YouTube by hitting add files, uploading that by hitting open. And then I can type out a quick prompt for the way that I want this interactive dashboard to be created. And so I said, I want to create an interactive analytics dashboard artifact showing the last 28 days worth of YouTube video data and giving an executive summary up top for the general consensus of this month or of the last 28 days worth of data. I want this in a soft brutalism style using blue and neon pink for accent colors. So I'm giving it the exact style that I want. I'm telling it that I want an executive summary. I want this to be an interactive analytics dashboard so I can view my data in a much better way than what YouTube provides. I mean, you saw what that looked like. It's not pretty and it's not fun to go around the YouTube dashboard. So, I want to be able to come in here, upload my documents, and then create nice dashboards with them. And then I say, I'm going to share this with my team. So, make sure it's a comprehensive overview. Then I'll say, let's go. And remember, I'm not creating a skill right now. I'm just getting a result. And then I'm going to reverse engineer the process and ask Claude, how did you get that result? Let's create a skill around that. And so, anytime I upload analytics, it can use that exact style. I don't even have to type out a prompt. I can just upload the file, hit send, and go on about my day.
Okay. And so Claw just got done creating my dashboard. It took about five minutes, and that's okay, right? It took kind of a while, but it had to do this from the ground up. So, let's check it out. Let's see what it created for us. I'm going to open this up. Remember, this used my YouTube analytics. It has this nice neon pink style, and it shows my 28 day uh channel performance. And this is actual data from my YouTube. So, this is very cool. And remember, I said I wanted an interactive dashboard. And take a look at this. Come on. If I click these tabs, it changes what is actually being shown here. So, video performance, clickthrough rate by video, growth, and revenue. Oh jeez. I mean, come on. How could you not How could you not think this thing is the coolest dashboard ever? Isn't this so much more fun to look at than that boring YouTube video dashboard? And this is just off one prompt. No editing. This is what happens when I just start uploading, obviously. But um we have nice interactive dashboard with these charts and very simple stuff but very powerful and it's just the way that I like viewing my stuff. That's why I'm creating my own custom analytics dashboard and claw. I can go to video performance and see completely other tasks as well. We have watch time per video. Uh very cool. How do we create an automation around this? I could keep editing this, but I actually love the way that this looks right now.
So, if you're going to reverse engineer a skill, here's a follow-up prompt that you might want to type. I said, "Okay, this looks beautiful. Now, what I want you to do is create a skill using the skill creator in the and the DBS framework that creates these dashboards every single time I upload my YouTube analytics as that zip file you just saw." I say, "I really like the exact way this dashboard turned out. So, ensure that we can get consistent results when using this skill because I want to be able to generate it in the exact same format with the exact same tabs, fonts, colors, and everything you just used in this artifact here. So, anytime I upload my YouTube analytics, I want to do just that. Let's create the automation that does that. So, I'm reverse engineering it. I got my result. Now, I'm telling Claude to look at what it did, create an automation that can create these exact dashboards anytime I upload this type of file. So, every 28 days, I could come in here, upload my file, and now I can go here and I can download it in my folder. It's on my computer since I'm using Cowwork. If I'm using claw.ai, I can download it as a public link and share it. Uh, I can do whatever. So, I'm going to send this off. And now Claude is going to create the skill in the exact same way that it created the skill for my proposal generator, except it's using this as a reference rather than trying to create something before it creates the skill. It has the asset. Now, it just needs to create the skill around that. And like I said, just like before, it's going through the step-by-step process. And again, it's running test cases to verify. Flaud is going to ensure that it gets it right every time when creating the automation. So, it's still going to run those tests and create the evaluations for you to approve, reject, give feedback to, and so on.
And so, just like that, it created our YouTube analytics skill with dashboard spec data processing, which is how Claude processes chart data, table data. So, Claude went through a process to create that interactive dashboard that you saw, right? It didn't just spawn it in out of nowhere. It did something in its mind, or I guess you can't really call it a mind, but it feels like a mind. it did something uh in its processing that created the charts in that way and so now it had to think backwards and think okay how did I do that and then it created files on how it did do that which is amazing and so it gave us our direction it gave us our blueprints and that's all we really needed in order to create that skill which is beautiful so now I'm going to hit copy to my skills and then I can just go and see if this worked so I'm going to select new task now that it's in my skills and all I want to do is add photos and files upload that content Hit open and hit let's go. I don't even want to type out a prompt. I just want to see if it can generate this using the skill without me even talking about it. And it says let's invoke the YouTube analytics skill to handle this. You can see the progress over here on the right. That's why we use co-work. And if we go to the YouTube analytics skill and we open that up, as you can see, we just have references in here. But we could probably create a script that creates the dashboard so Claw doesn't have to create it from the ground up and use up all of these tokens every time. So it can just instantly within 5 seconds spawn in the dashboard and it doesn't even need to think. And so this time it was a lot quicker because it already knew how to analyze the data. It already knew how to do everything. And now it says view your analytics dashboard. It's ready. So when I click it, it should be in that exact same style. And as you can see it is in that exact same style. We have all of the cards. We have these tabs here with the interactive graphs and everything we need. All I did remember was uploaded my YouTube analytics. Now, every 28 days, I can come in here, throw in my YouTube analytics, and then it will just use the YouTube Analytics skill and build out the dashboard in the exact way that I want it to build it.
Now, let me show you one more example that's going to piece this all together. And I'm going to show you this example from a skill that I already have created called prep. So, I have a skill that checks my Google calendar, that checks my CRM, and if I have calls with certain people that are in my CRM, it'll give me notes and briefs on what to remember about these people based on call summaries and notes that I had with them. So, if I select call prep and I say tomorrow, this is going to run through that step-by-step process of getting the date for tomorrow, checking to see who I have calls with, and then grabbing notes about those people from my CRM and notion. So, this is using Google Calendar and Notion. I'm not going to show you how to create this one. I just want to show you it's possible. And you can watch my full skills guide if you want to see me create something like this using connectors and connecting to actual tools. But this is the idea. I actually have these real things on my calendar and it's pulling from a real Notion database. It says, "I have two calls tomorrow, Andre Williams at 10 and Michelle Tran at noon. Let me search the CRM for both." And so now it's actually loading in Notion. It fetched those events from my Google calendar and now it got matches for both and now it's pulling in the full CRM records. And remember all I said was call prep tomorrow and now it's giving me like a daily brief on what I need to be ready for tomorrow. What are these people all about? What are these calls going to be about? Who are these people based on the information from the CRM? It says Andre runs a digital agency. You're overhauling their project scoping and client approval workflows because profitability is getting killed by scope creep. And then call with Michelle TR. this is a discovery call. So I'm like, "Okay, I've got a discovery call tomorrow and I've got somebody who's already with us." And then it gives me information about the discovery call and it says she's already sold on the concept. She just needs to see how it maps to her firm. And you'd go about creating that in the exact same way. You could go to the customize tab, go to connectors, and then just connect any tool you use and actually create automations with those tools. So step one, go to my Google Drive. Step two, read my Google document that I have prepared for X, Y, or Z. Step three, send that to an email to my business partner. Step four, then you could keep on going, right, with tool connecting and LLM linking and chaining and doing all of these cool things. They have tons of different connectors that you can access in here. They've got like Mercury, Air Table, Apollo, they've got HubSpot, Monday.com, pretty much anything you can think of.
Okay, so that's all I have for this video. I hope you enjoyed and I hope you learned how to automate tasks using Clawed Skills. I highly recommend everybody starts doing this because this is the new way that business is conducted. And if you're not doing business like this, if you're not starting to pick off these low-hanging fruits, then you will be left behind. As cliche as it sounds, because there are people like myself who work a lot less than some people, but get better results and have more time and make more money. And it all starts with automation and doing it the right way. And so when you can start picking off these little tasks one by one, that's when the real benefit happens. And that's when you really start to learn automation from the ground up.
Now, if you want us to help you implement AI in your business done for you, we do have an application. Obviously, not everybody gets accepted because we're trying to work with business owners that are the perfect match and we can't help everyone. If we could that would be great, but that's what our AI foundations community is for. More of a self-s served thing. But if you want more hightouch stuff, use the application down below and you can apply to see if you're a good fit to work with us. But anyway, if you enjoyed this video, please drop a like and subscribe. I would highly appreciate it. If you have any questions or you want to see any videos about Clawude, leave a comment below. I love seeing those comments asking me to create content because number one, it motivates me and number two, it tells me what you guys actually want to see so I'm not just creating content aimlessly. With that being said, I'll see you in the next.