Skills
A skill is a packaged set of instructions (and optionally scripts or templates) that Claude loads when a task calls for it. Write your procedure once, for example "how we format a client report", and it's applied consistently.
Lesson 9
Automation
Move from asking Claude things to having Claude do things: with your tools, your procedures, on a schedule.
Agents
An agent works through a multi-step task on its own: plans, uses tools, checks results and keeps going until it's done. Give it a clear goal, the limits it must respect, and what "done" means.
Connectors
Connectors link Claude to apps you already use (email, calendar, drive, docs, chat) so it can read and act on real information instead of what you paste.
MCP
The Model Context Protocol is an open standard for connecting AI to tools and data. Connectors are often built on it, and developers can write their own MCP servers for internal systems.
Scheduled tasks
Run a prompt on a timetable: a Monday summary of your inbox, a daily check of a dashboard, a weekly report draft. Start with a task you already do by hand every week.
Start small
Automate one boring, repetitive, low-risk task first. Review its output for a few runs before trusting it. Never automate sending things to customers without a human check.
Try this prompt
Here's a task I do every week: [describe step by step]. Turn it into a reusable instruction set, list which tools or data it needs, and point out which steps still need a human.
Avoid
- Automating a process you haven't done by hand
- Giving an agent no limits or definition of done
- Skipping review of the first few runs