Full transcript
0:00Hey everyone, in a previous video I
0:02brought on Akello to show you what
0:04Claude CoWork can do. Today he's going
0:06one level deeper into the things that
0:08make Claude CoWork actually feel a
0:10little bit like yours, and that is this
0:12idea of skills. Skills are how you stop
0:15setting up Claude from scratch every
0:17single session. And honestly, once you
0:19see where this all goes, a single skill
0:22might just be the beginning for you. In
0:24fact, for some of you, you might
0:26actually find that you don't need a lot
0:27of the fancy AI tools that are out
0:29there. And I say that with some
0:31hesitation as someone who's actually
0:32building a tool of my own. Uh, but if
0:35you can master some of what Akello will
0:37be covering it in this video, you won't
0:38need a lot of those things. So, Akello,
0:41over to you.
0:42Hello everyone, glad to be back on the
0:44Nerdy Nautilus. Okay, so what I wanted
0:46to make sure you understood right now is
0:48that every time that you open up Claude
0:50code or I mean Claude or Claude CoWork
0:53or Chat GPT or Codex or whatever it is,
0:57it doesn't know your voice. It doesn't
0:58have any idea what genre you're writing
1:00in. It doesn't know how you write your
1:03blurbs or your newsletters or whatever.
1:06You either have to explain all of this
1:07every single time or you live with this
1:10like generic output. Skills fixes
1:14[snorts] all of that. So, a skill is a
1:17reusable set of instructions that you
1:19build once and they load whenever you
1:21need them. Like Neo in the Matrix, you
1:23know, when he knows kung fu all of a
1:26sudden. You do certain things and you
1:28load them up correctly and then your
1:31skill will know kung fu. It's not a
1:33prompt, it's different. More complicated
1:36and it does things, like physical
1:39things. I mean, you build a skill and it
1:41will actually give your AI the ability
1:44to think about what the thing is, use
1:47the skill to do the thing every single
1:49time the same way, go out, grab whatever
1:52it needs, bring it back, and do it over
1:55and over and over again. But a prompt is
1:58simply something that you cut and paste
2:01or copy and paste, but a skill is a
2:03persistent layer that kind of sits there
2:07as logic waiting to be invoked. When I
2:10say invoked, I do mean invoked. I mean,
2:13like a
2:14wizard or something that invokes a
2:17spell. You can bring forth by saying a
2:20specific phrase. Uh, on my particular
2:23computer, as you can see right here, I
2:26have uh, some skills that are already
2:29loaded. docx, pdf, pptx,
2:34xlsx,
2:37narrative architect, skill creator, and
2:40schedule. And then there are some other
2:42ones specific to different plugins and
2:44stuff, like the CoWork plugin manager or
2:47the CoWork OS, which is a completely
2:49different thing that is was made by this
2:52other creator that I've started using
2:54and I absolutely love it. But that's a
2:58whole subject for another day. All
3:00right, so what I'm going to do today is
3:03I'm just going to show you the simple
3:05functionality of this particular thing.
3:08So, now that I have
3:11all an idea of the things I can do, I'm
3:14not going to make a story today, even
3:16though I am tempted to. It would make
3:18this video really, really long. So, what
3:22I'm going to do is
3:24in look at some of the things we already
3:26have opened in my second brain over
3:30here, which you
3:33cannot see. So, I'm going to slide it
3:36over. There we go. Okay, over here in my
3:39second brain, I have a bunch of files
3:42that I've been working on inside of my
3:45second brain. It's where I write, it's
3:48where I manage my business, where I do
3:52consulting to help people
3:55integrate AI into their businesses. And
3:58it's also
3:59>> [laughter]
4:00>> it's also
4:01uh, where I have all of my slight things
4:06on the side. Books, non-fiction,
4:09memoirs, stuff like that. So, a lot of
4:11times when you are working with these
4:14things, you need to output that as a
4:17different sort of output. So, what I do
4:22is I invoke a skill and Claude happens
4:25to know how to make a docx or a pdf or a
4:28pptx or whatever it is. But remember,
4:30you can use this for voice, like your
4:33writing voice. You can create a writing
4:35voice style, analyze your You could do
4:38anything as a matter of fact, when we
4:40get to the end of this series, which we
4:42have just started with the one from last
4:44week, we will definitely get to actually
4:49making a skill where we write with your
4:51voice and we can do some fundamentals
4:54work, walk you through how to get to the
4:57point where your voice can be mimicked
5:00through a skill.
5:01>> [laughter]
5:02>> It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool.
5:03Okay.
5:04Now that we've teased that, let's
5:07actually get this done. Okay, so I'm
5:11going to say I would like to take
5:15chapter1.md
5:17in the main file
5:19and in the main folder
5:23and I want to make that into a docx file
5:26and I want you to use the docx skill,
5:29please. Now, just in case you're
5:30wondering what I'm using for my
5:33dictation, I'm using this thing called
5:35WhisperFlow. It is incredibly accurate
5:38and it does a lot of formatting for you
5:40if you're doing stuff. So,
5:43not sponsored, I just love to use it.
5:45And Give me 10 seconds. If you want to
5:48help cranking out way more books with
5:49AI, join the Story Hacker AI waitlist
5:51below. While the group's closed, I'll
5:53send you my full prompt pack for free.
5:56Click the link, enter your email, and
5:58I'll shoot it over.
5:59Now it's running the skill. As you can
6:01see, it's actually running the skill.
6:04And it is writing the actual docx file.
6:08I always find it interesting that it
6:10actually counts up,
6:12which is kind of cool, but also a little
6:14stressful cuz you're watching your
6:15tokens just float away.
6:17>> [laughter]
6:19>> And it looks like it's done with its
6:21preliminary write and it's working on
6:24some stuff, uh, fixing some syntax
6:27errors and things like that. But think
6:29about it, everyone, it is just a skill
6:32that I was able to pull down from a
6:34skill repository and use on my Claude
6:39CoWork. It's absolutely awesome and it's
6:42really easy. And as you can see, it even
6:44pulls up the actual document right here.
6:48And now I have a full
6:51that I can output to things like Google
6:54Drive or whatever I want. Even, you
6:58know, Word, whatever I want. It's a
7:00wonderful, wonderful piece of software
7:03and I really enjoy it. I love skills.
7:07I want you to think of it like it's a an
7:09employee handbook. That handbook that
7:12has a table of contents. That table of
7:14contents has
7:15things where it refers to specific areas
7:18in that book to use the information.
7:21That's basically what a skill is. It has
7:23a lot of information in it that helps it
7:25do things for you every time the same
7:28way. All of that is congregated and
7:33easily accessible and you write it once
7:35and every session it starts with Claude,
7:39you just invoke it when you need it.
7:42Like you're a wizard, Harry. Anyway,
7:45that is skills. That's kind of the
7:48before and the after. As a matter of
7:50fact, it shows you a functional way to
7:53use skills. I'm going to show you that
7:56there are way more nuanced ways to use
8:00skills. And next video, what we're going
8:03to do
8:04it's going to be a lot of fun. We are
8:08going to create a skill from scratch.