Anthropic has carved out a sizeable share of the AI-code assistant market with Claude Code, becoming a popular way for many modern developers to orchestrate agents with repeatable workflows, integrating all kinds of tools in interesting ways.
Today, the most effective devs are building using Skills, which are reusable sets of instructions that help Claude tackle common engineering tasks. Think of files that give your teammates (or in this case, agents) specialist skills: one for debugging, another for security reviews, another for frontend design, and so on.
A good rule of thumb is (the good old DRY principle) if you find yourself giving Claude the same instructions more than once, those instructions should probably be a skill instead.
It’s also worth understanding where MCP servers fit into the picture. Skills tell Claude how to perform a task (eg: to review code looking for security vulnerabilities), while MCP servers give Claude access to external tools and systems that it might need to perform the skill (this could be a GitHub repo, or Slack messages and so on), so the two go hand-in-hand.
With that in mind, here are ten Claude Code Skills that can genuinely improve day-to-day development work.
1. Debug
Debug is one of Claude Code’s bundled Skills and is designed to help investigate problems systematically rather than immediately jumping to solutions or writing loads of code. If you’re dealing with a failing deployment, intermittent bug or broken test suite, Claude will work through potential causes, identify likely failure points and suggest where to investigate next, which is a great way for you to learn if it’s working with tech that you’re not that familiar with.
Invoke it with:
/debug src/auth/auth.ts
2. Security Review
One of the major criticisms of agentic coding (or referred to, often negatively, as vibe coding) is that it opens the door to security flaws.
Now of course, regardless of what we do here, there’s an inherent issue with have an LLM check its own code for flaws. However, it’s particularly useful if you wrote some code yourself and want to check for common vulnerabilitiesthat you might have missed. To invoke it, use /security-review and you can point to particular files from there:
/security-review src/api/webhooks/stripe.ts
This is particularly useful for solo developers, or even experts who want to bounce their thoughts off of an LLM as they code.
3. Code Review
Another handy built-in skills is /code-review, and rather than looking for security issues specifically, a code-review workflow focuses on readability, maintainability, and architectural concerns, as well edge cases you might not have considered. Just like /security-review, just invoke it with the command and direct it towards files you want to review.
4. Simplify
The /simplify skill is bundled in as well, to help identify unnecessary complexity and over-engineering in your code. It’s really handy if you’re working in a mature codebase or where you’ve accumulated years of abstractions that are hard to understand, let alone document. So, run /simplify with your path, like so:
/simplify src/hooks/useCustomerData.ts
5. Frontend Design
The /frontend-design in-built skill is, as you’d expect, a great one to use when you want to focus on making your UI look better, but more importantly it’ll help you to review your application in terms of user experience, accessibility, visual hierarchy, layout issues and more.
Just like the last few in this list, just use /frontend-design with your path to invoke it.
6. Webapp Testing
Testing can be extremely repetitive, making it an ideal candidate for a reusable Skill. A /webapp-testing workflow can generate Playwright scenarios, identify missing test coverage and suggest edge cases that may otherwise be overlooked, and (like so many amazing skills) are available on GitHub for you to use right away.
7. Claude API
If you’re integrating Claude into your own applications, use the /claude-api skill to get guidance, documentation, and best practices for how to do it.
This is particularly handy for error handling, and it can dramatically reduce the amount of documentation hunting required, so we’d recommend giving it a go, like so:
/claude-api api/chat/route.ts
8. Batch
Batch is underrated in that it’s designed for repetitive changes across multiple files, and it helps Claude plan and execute consistent changes at scale. For large refactoring projects, this is a great way to keep Claude on track:
/batch
9. Skill Creator
Perhaps the most useful workflow of all is the one that creates new ones, with Skill Creator you can help package a process into a reusable Skill stored in your project’s .claude/skills directory.
Anthropic have this over on their GitHub, install it invoke it to begin the process of making your own:
/skill-creator
What’s Next?
We hope you enjoyed this article and feel a little more confident using Claude Code’s in-built skills, and even getting started with building your own.
We’ll be back with an article soon about how to make a great custom skill, and in then meantime make sure you let us know on socials how these tips help you.