Claude Cowork · Skills

Stop writing Claude skills. Record them instead.

Record yourself doing a job once, talk through it as you go, and Claude turns the recording into a skill it can run again. You don't write a single instruction.

5steps

~10 minstart to finish

1reusable skill

Pro+plan needed

Read this before you scroll. It doesn't work everywhere yet. Straight from Anthropic's help centre: "Recording a skill is available on Pro, Max, and Team plans, in Cowork in Claude for Mac. It isn't available in chat, on Windows, or on Free and Enterprise plans."

On Windows, on Free, or on Enterprise? You can still build the same skill, you just type it instead of recording it. Start here: Build your first Claude skill by hand.
Not sure skills are switched on at all? Do this one first: Turn on Claude Skills.

What "Record a skill" actually is

A skill is a set of instructions Claude saves once and reaches for later. Normally you write those instructions. Record a skill lets you demonstrate them instead: you hit record, do the task the way you always do it, narrate what you're doing, and Claude writes the skill from what it watched.

It went live on 21 July 2026 inside Cowork, which is the part of Claude that does work on your behalf rather than just chatting back. Cowork is on Mac, Windows, web and mobile. Recording a skill is the Mac-only piece.

What you'll have at the end

One saved skill

Built from your own way of doing the job, not a generic template.

A narration script

The exact words to say while recording, so Claude catches the reasoning.

A shortlist of jobs

Four kinds of task that record well, and one kind that doesn't.

A check that it worked

One line to run afterwards that proves the skill actually fires.

The one thing that decides whether this works

Narrate the decisions, not the clicks. Claude can already see your clicks. What it can't see is why you chose that folder, why you skipped that row, or why the second paragraph always gets cut. That reasoning is the part a written instruction always leaves out, and it's the part that makes the skill usable next week.

Narrating the clicks

"Okay, opening the folder. Clicking the file. Now I'm selecting the column. Copying that. Pasting it here."

Narrating the decisions

"I'm opening last month's folder, not this month's, because the invoice always lands a month behind. I skip anything under fifty dollars, it's not worth chasing."

Same recording length. The second one produces a skill that knows the rules. The first one produces a skill that knows where you clicked once.

Do this in the next 10 minutes

Pick the job you've already done twice this week

Don't pick something clever. Pick something boring and repetitive that you'd recognise instantly. Then paste this into Cowork before you start recording, so Claude knows what it's about to watch.

Paste into Cowork first

I'm about to record myself doing a task I repeat every week. Before I start: ask me three questions about what the finished output has to look like, and what would make a run of this wrong. Then I'll record.

Answering those three questions out loud during the recording is what turns a demo into a skill.

The five steps

Open Cowork in Claude for Mac

Open the Claude desktop app on your Mac and go to Cowork. If you haven't set Cowork up yet, that's the prerequisite, and it takes about five minutes: Cowork setup guide.

Don't have the Mac app? Download it at claude.com/download. Cowork itself runs on Windows, on the web and on mobile. Recording is the Mac-only part, and it won't appear in the browser version or in a normal chat.

Have the job ready before you hit record

Open the files, the tabs and the folders you'd normally have open. You want to record the job, not the ten seconds of hunting for it. These record well:

The weekly reportPull the same numbers from the same place, drop them into the same shape, every week.

Filing what came inRename, sort and move files into the folders where they actually belong.

The reply you keep writingThe same answer to the same question, adjusted slightly each time.

The tidy-up before you sendThe cuts and format fixes you make to every document before it leaves.

One kind of job doesn't record well: anything where you make a genuinely different judgement each time. If two runs of the task look nothing alike, there's no pattern to catch, and you'll get a skill that confidently does the wrong thing.

Hit + and pick "Record a skill"

Click the + button in the composer, then choose Record a skill. Then click Start recording.

There's a second way in: go to Customize > Skills, click Add, then select Record your screen. Same feature, same result.

If neither path shows up, it's almost always the plan or the platform, not you. Recording needs Pro, Max or Team, on Mac, inside Cowork.

Do the task, and talk while you do it

Do it exactly the way you normally would. Don't perform a tidied-up version, because the messy real one is what you actually need automated. Claude is capturing your screen, your clicks, your typing and your voice.

Here's the narration template, and then the same thing filled in so you can see the pattern rather than guess at it.

Blank template. Say this out loud

I do this every [how often], and it takes me about [how long].
The finished thing has to [what good looks like].
I'm starting in [where], because [why there and not somewhere else].
I'm skipping [what you ignore], because [why it doesn't matter].
This bit here is the part I always get wrong, so [what you check].
It's done when [the finish line].

Filled in: a real weekly invoice run

I do this every Monday, and it takes me about twenty minutes.
The finished thing has to be one sheet, one row per client, newest at the top.
I'm starting in last month's folder, because the invoices always land a month behind.
I'm skipping anything under fifty dollars, because it costs more to chase than it's worth.
This bit here is the part I always get wrong, so I check the total against the bank line before I save.
It's done when the sheet is saved as a PDF in the Sent folder with this week's date on it.

When you've finished the job, click Done. If it went badly, click Discard and nothing is created.

Read what Claude proposes, then save it

Claude reviews the recording and proposes a skill. Nothing is saved until you say so. You'll get one of two things:

A new skill. Click Save to keep it, or Dismiss to throw the proposal away.
An update to a skill you already have. Click Update to apply it, or Dismiss.

Read it before you save. This is the moment you catch a rule it inferred wrongly, and fixing it here takes ten seconds.

You'll know it worked when you open a new Cowork session, describe the job in one line without explaining any of the steps, and it produces the same shape of output you recorded. If you have to re-explain the rules, the narration was too thin. Record it again and say the "because" parts out loud.

What happens to the recording

Worth knowing before you record your actual work, with your actual client names on screen. Anthropic's help centre says it plainly: "The video and audio from your recording aren't retained." Claude reviews the recording to build the skill, and "what's saved afterward is a set of screenshots from the session."

So the video goes, the screenshots stay. Two practical consequences:

Close anything you wouldn't want in a screenshot before you hit record. Other tabs, other clients, your inbox.
If you're in a regulated job, treat the screenshots the same way you'd treat any other copy of that data.

If the result is disappointing

Three things go wrong, and all three have the same shape of fix.

The skill just describes what you did, step by stepYou narrated clicks. Re-record and say the "because" behind each move, using the filled-in template above.

It invented a rule you never followIt filled a gap you left silent. Dismiss the proposal, then re-record and state the rule out loud at the moment it applies.

It never fires on its own afterwardsDescribe the job the way you'd say it to a person, in one line. If it still doesn't trigger, open the saved skill and add the words you'd actually use to ask for it.

Recording twice is normal. The first take is usually you learning what to say out loud, not a failure of the feature. The second take is the one you keep.