Claude AI Agents: Automate Your Work with Skills & Plugins

Find out how this course is built before you start. You’ll get the theory behind Claude’s agentic side, simple practices with free tools, and profession-based case studies. If you already know the basics, you’ll also learn which sections to skip.

Cowork and Chat now live in one Claude prompt. This lecture shows what changed, which tools you get on a free plan, how to pick a local folder, and how to read a task’s progress panel. You’ll also learn to organize your chats with custom groups.

Give Claude a folder instead of a single file. You’ll rename files, create directories, and work with several folders in one task. We also cover Manual vs Auto permission mode, so you know when Claude asks before it writes or deletes.

Make a messy folder of PDFs and images organize itself. Claude reads the contents, not just the file names, and proposes categories, sorting logic, and naming conventions. You approve or tweak the plan first. You’ll also learn why that confirm step matters.

Control how Claude responds. You’ll compare the global instructions in Settings with a CLAUDE.md file that lives in your working folder. We use both in a live example, and you’ll learn to ask Claude to write the instructions for you.

Create a Claude Project and see how every chat inherits its files, instructions, and memory. You’ll learn to pin, rename, and move chats between projects, and why working inside a project keeps Claude consistent.

Link a project to a folder on your computer and see what changes. Claude can search hundreds of files, create documents in the right place, and run multi-step tasks. This lecture explains when to use a chat project and when to use the agent.

Connect Claude to real services such as Gmail and Trivago. You’ll set connector permissions (Always allow, Needs approval, Blocked), toggle connectors per chat, and choose how tools load. You’ll also see how to add a custom MCP connector.

Run your first real multi-step agent task. Claude scans your Gmail for proposals, researches each company, and writes a verdict report in Google Docs. You’ll then turn it into a scheduled task that runs every week.

Claude already knows how to do the job. It doesn’t know how you want it done. Learn what a Skill is, why it works like onboarding a new hire, and the two main types: document and research skills, and automation and orchestration skills.

Browse Claude’s built-in Discover tab and the main skill libraries. Then install a skill by uploading its ZIP. You’ll also learn how to turn a skill off, edit it, download it, or uninstall it.

Understand what’s inside every skill. We cover the kebab-case name, the 200-600 character description that decides when Claude loads it, the step-by-step instructions, and bundled assets, scripts, and references.

Run the same request with and without a skill and compare the results. You’ll learn how to read a SKILL.md, what to do when Claude skips a skill, and how skills that run Python scripts affect your usage.

Build your first skill with Claude’s Skill Creator. We use a five-part prompt template to create a skill that turns any paragraph into singable rhyming lyrics. You’ll also learn how to test it, save it, and download it.

Go beyond single-file skills. You’ll build a skill that answers questions from a business FAQ, and another that drafts email replies from a voice profile. We use an extended 10-point template and cover the ZIP upload step.

Make one skill orchestrate others. You’ll build a daily AI news brief that researches stories with the web-research skill and compiles a PDF. It then creates social posts automatically, so you can see how agentic workflows come together.

A skill is a recipe. A plugin is the whole cookbook. Learn what plugins contain, how they differ from skills, and how slash commands trigger them. We also cover why plugins need a paid plan.

Build a simple plugin from a template. You’ll create a skill plus a slash command that generates YouTube titles, descriptions, and tags from a script. We also cover how to fix a plugin when Claude forgets the command.

Upgrade your plugin with Edit with Claude. Add a voice and style guide, a script-writing skill, and a bundled copy of the web-research skill. You’ll also learn why plugins are so useful for teams.

Learn how subagents keep your main chat light by working in a parallel chat. You’ll turn the research step into a subagent with a cheaper model, limited tools, and its own rules.

Start the Google practice section. Claude reads your sent emails and writes a voice profile of how you write. Then you save a “draft an email” workflow and test it. Claude drafts replies in your style, and nothing is sent without your approval.

Create a “Pimp my inbox” skill that labels the last 7 days of email without deleting or sending anything. You’ll schedule it, see why approval prompts can block unattended runs, and use a read-only inbox briefing instead.

Three more inbox prompts. Flag unread promotions with a “Spam to review” label, get a “Worth reading” or “Skip” digest of your newsletters, and catch up on what you missed after a trip, sorted by urgency.

Combine connectors in one workflow. Claude finds dates and deadlines in your emails and adds the ones you approve to Google Calendar. It also builds a contact sheet from Gmail, then you turn it into an “update my contacts” skill.

Create calendar events with Claude, then ask it to prepare you for the day. For each meeting, Claude pulls context from the attendees’ emails and linked Drive docs, then writes a prep doc. It also flags conflicts between sources.

Turn messy quick notes into something usable. Claude reads your Keep notes, proposes an organization plan, and creates tasks in Google Tasks. You’ll also see how to create cleaned-up copies of notes without touching the originals.

Let Claude organize a messy Downloads folder into categories, with a “Review me” folder for uncertain files. Then it reads a folder of invoices and card statements. It sorts them by month and category and builds expense report sheets.

Use Sheets like a small app. Claude proposes a plan first, then builds a habit tracker with checkboxes, streaks, and a weekly summary. Next you build a monthly budget sheet where actual spending comes from a Transactions tab by formula. You can add expenses from plain text, or from invoices as images or PDFs, with Claude assigning each a category.

Make Claude work like NotebookLM. You give it documents and links, and it answers only from them, names the source for every claim, and says so when something isn’t covered. You’ll test it with Back to the Future and then try to trick it.

Claude interviews you and saves a personal reference profile. Then it fills a Google Form using only that profile, flags any question it can’t answer, and saves a new version of the profile with your answers. Works for contracts, HR, medical forms and more.

Build an 8-slide deck from a brand guide, a company overview and a financial report, with no invented data. Then connect Google Slides and let Claude enhance an existing deck using brand guidelines, flagging slides that contradict each other.

Turn a PDF into 10 flashcards you can click through, plus an Anki-ready file. Then upgrade the prompt with mixed formats (true/false, fill-in-the-blank, scenarios), distractors, difficulty levels and source references.

Learn what artifacts are and build a landing page and a quiz just by chatting with Claude. Edit them with simple requests, export or share them with a link, then turn a local employee spreadsheet into an interactive directory with search and filters.

Learn how the case studies work. You’ll take on the role of a teacher, a café owner, a bookkeeper, and a content creator, and solve the common problems of each job with Claude. The difficulty goes up step by step, and everything applies to your own profession.

Turn rough notes into a finished lesson plan using a school template. Then create a printable quiz with an answer key and an easier version. Finally, turn it into an interactive quiz you can share with a link that works on phones.

Create a grading skill with the full rubric inside, so Claude grades the same way every time. Run it on student answers to get scores, grade bands, and feedback for each student. You also get a class summary of what to teach again.

Build a weekly order skill with rules for open days, average use, a 10% buffer, and cheapest price per unit. It drafts one email per supplier. Then calculate the cost of every drink and size against a 30% rule, with price suggestions that factor in a milk price increase.

Build next week’s staff schedule from a messy staff chat, and see how Claude flags problems it can’t solve. Then create a skill that replies to customer reviews, flags the risky ones, and finds the causes of complaints in your files.

Wrap up the café case study. Save work that only lives in the chat as a file, then have Claude read the order, costs, schedule, and review replies. It writes a one-page briefing with the money, the problems, and the decisions for the week.

Build a reusable skill that sorts a client’s bank statement into categories. It handles personal purchases, refunds, owner’s draws, and duplicates, and it never guesses. Then compare receipts against the statement to find missing receipts and amount mismatches.

Split one PDF of receipts into named files and sort them into category folders. Then close the month: fill in the books without breaking formulas, compare with the previous month, and write a plain-language one-page summary for the client.

Find out what’s really working on your channel. Claude looks beyond views at % viewed and subscribers, and compares long videos and Shorts separately. Then build a skill that turns one long video into 3 Shorts, an Instagram caption, and a community post.

Group viewer comments into requests and combine them with your performance report to pick your next video. Then check a sponsor offer against your rules and rates, and get a verdict and a counter-offer.

Covers merging Chat/Cowork into one tab, connecting a folder with read/write permission, running your first prompt, and reading the Progress/Context panels.

Reading vs. editing a folder, renaming/deleting files, and the Manual/Automatic/Skip approval settings.

Scanning a messy folder and having Claude suggest categories and naming before touching anything.

Difference between account-wide instructions and folder/task-specific instructions, plus letting Claude write the CLAUDE.md for you

Creating a standard chat project, attaching files, instructions, and memory.

How a Cowork project links to a real folder on your computer, saves outputs directly, and differs from a chat project.

What connectors are, browsing the directory, connecting Gmail, and Always Allow / Needs Approval / Blocked settings.

Full example: scanning Gmail proposals, researching companies, and generating a Google Doc — then scheduling it weekly.

Installing Claude for Chrome, chatting with open tabs, controlling the browser, and chaining a multi-source research task into a PDF.

The "Teach Claude" feature, recording a workflow into a shortcut, and its limits — blocked sites, context limits.

Building a Gmail-based project that analyzes your sent emails to create a personal writing-style profile, then using a repeatable instruction file so every drafted reply sounds like you.

Creating a "pimp my inbox" instruction that scans recent emails, sorts them into labeled categories, and reports back — without ever deleting or sending anything.

Three more Gmail workflows: downloading attachments into organized Drive folders via the Chrome extension, building a spending tracker from receipts, and labeling unread promotional emails for review.

Three more Gmail workflows: downloading attachments into organized Drive folders via the Chrome extension, building a spending tracker from receipts, and labeling unread promotional emails for review.

Letting Claude tidy a messy Downloads folder into categorized subfolders with an index file, then a deeper example reading invoices and statements to generate monthly expense reports in Sheets and Excel.

Using the pptx skill to turn a company's style guide, overview, and financials into a fully branded PowerPoint deck that follows exact colors, fonts, and structure.

Converting a source document into a clickable flashcard artifact plus an Anki-ready export, then leveling it up with difficulty tags, distractors, and mixed question formats.

An introduction to Claude's artifacts — what they render, chat vs. Cowork creation, building a landing page and a quiz from scratch, editing versions, and publishing a shareable link.

Going beyond static artifacts to build a "live" employee directory tool that edits a real spreadsheet on your computer directly from an interactive interface.

Restricting Claude to only the links and documents you provide, so it never fills gaps with outside knowledge, then testing that it correctly refuses anything outside those sources.

Interviewing Claude to build a personal reference profile, then using it with the Chrome extension to fill out real forms accurately, flagging anything it can't confidently answer.

Understanding Claude Skills as the onboarding manual for an already-expert model — step-by-step instructions, tone, and context that work identically across Chat, Cowork, and Claude Code.

Browsing and installing skills from Anthropic's built-in directory, plus community marketplaces like SkillHub, Skillsmp, and Smithery — and how to bring any downloaded skill into Claude.

Breaking down a SKILL.md file's required structure — the always-loaded metadata, the step-by-step markdown instructions, and the bundled scripts, references, and assets loaded only when needed.

Testing how a skill's description determines whether Claude loads it automatically, comparing a plain request against an explicit skill call, and using a skill that runs local scripts.

Using Anthropic's built-in skill-creator skill and a five-part template to turn a plain-language idea into a working, installable skill.

Converting an earlier voice-profile-plus-instructions workflow into one proper skill, using an expanded nine-part template with a good example and things to avoid.

Combining the web-research, pdf, and social skills into a single daily-AI-brief skill that researches, writes, compiles a PDF, and hands off to another skill automatically.

Understanding plugins as a complete starter kit — skills, connectors, sub-agents, and hooks bundled for a whole role or workflow — and how they differ from a single skill.

Expanding an existing plugin with a new skill, a bundled style guide, and a frozen copy of another skill — versioning the plugin as it grows.

Building a real hooks.json entry that runs one skill automatically after another finishes, based on a condition like output length — true conditional automation, not just prompting.

Understanding how a sub-agent runs a step on a separate, constrained chat instance — with its own model and rules — to keep the main conversation's context window light.

Setting up a recurring task by chatting with Claude or filling in the form directly, understanding "runs on this computer," and reviewing a scheduled task's run history.

Understanding prompt-injection risk from files, skills, and plugins pulled from the web, the three approval levels, folder sandboxing, and best practices like duplicating sensitive files before you work on them.