Skills & Self-Improvement
How Claude Code discovers, executes, and iteratively refines reusable skills
The skills system creates a self-improvement loop: relevant skills are automatically surfaced each turn, a classifier watches for user preferences during execution, and improvements are applied back to the skill definition file. Built-in skills like /remember and /skillify demonstrate the pattern.
6 stepsskillsself-improvementlearning
Step-by-step breakdown
1
⚙️Automatic skill surfacing
Discover Skills GuidanceEach turn, relevant skills are automatically matched and presented to the agent as reminders, so it can use existing patterns without explicit user requests.
Relevant skills are automatically surfaced each turn
Techniques
tool-use-guidanceconditional-logicscope-limiting
2
🔧Execute a skill
Skill Tool3
🔌Detect improvement signals
Skill Improvement Hook (user)4
🔌Apply improvements to skill file
Skill Improvement Apply (user message)5
🔌Built-in: /remember
Bundled Skill: remember (memory review)6
🔌Built-in: /skillify
Bundled Skill: skillify