POLR AI Getting Started Series · 3 of 5

Getting started with Claude Skills, capture once, reuse forever.

A hands-on course for built environment teams ready to turn one-off prompts into a reusable institutional playbook. Build your first three Skills, deploy them across the team, and walk away with a Skills library your firm reuses for years.

About 110 minutes, self paced. Pairs with Cowork. Designed for the operations leader, owner, marketing lead, BD lead, or process person tired of re-explaining how the firm wants the work done.

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Reading time · ~110 minBuilt for AEC opsPOLR AI Getting Started Series · 3 of 5

What you will cover

01What a Skill isSkill versus prompt versus Project. The institutional-playbook framing that makes Skills the only artifact that compounds.02Pick your first threeThe pay-back-in-30-days filter. Worked examples for ops, BD, marketing, estimating.03Build a Skill from scratchSKILL.md anatomy. Instructions, examples, trigger phrases. Common mistakes.04Deploy and adoptRoll a Skill out so the team actually uses it. The first useful answer in 30 seconds test.05Manage the libraryVersioning, ownership, deprecation. When to build versus when to bring in POLR.

Module 01 · Foundation

What a Skill is, in plain English.

A Skill is a written procedure with one new property: a robot follows it perfectly every time. Before you build one, get the mental model clear.

Skill versus prompt versus Project

Prompt. One conversation, one ask. Lives in your head or a Notes file. Dies when the conversation closes.
Project. A workspace with persistent instructions and a reference library. The instructions apply to everything you do in that Project.
Skill. A reusable instruction set Claude loads on demand when the task matches. The instructions apply across Projects, across teammates, across months.

The retention testIf a process can leave the firm when one person leaves, it is a prompt. If it stays when the person leaves, it is a Skill. The Skills library is the firm's institutional memory in a form a robot can run.

Why Skills compound

Most AI investment depreciates. Models change, prompts drift, the team forgets which one worked. Skills compound. Every Skill the firm writes raises the floor on what the next junior hire produces on day one. Every revision gets baked in for everyone, instantly.

A Skill is a written procedure with one new property. A robot follows it perfectly every time. If you have a process you keep re-explaining to new hires, that is a Skill in waiting.

POLR observation

Module 02 · Selection

Pick your first three Skills.

Three is the right number. Fewer and you do not feel the leverage. More and you stall in scope. Use the pay-back-in-30-days filter to choose.

The pay-back-in-30-days filter

A good first Skill meets four tests: someone runs the process at least monthly, the firm has opinions on how it should be done, the output has a clear shape, and the senior person is the bottleneck.

filter.txt

01Frequency. Monthly minimum. Weekly is better.
02Opinions. The firm cares how this looks, sounds, decides.
03Shape. The output is a memo, a checklist, a recommendation.
       Not vibes. Not a conversation.
04Bottleneck. The senior person is the rate limiter today.

Worked examples by role

Operations. Submittal review, weekly status memo, RFI triage.
BD. Go / no-go on a bid, prospect research brief, RFP qualification questions.
Marketing. Case study draft, LinkedIn post in the principal's voice, proposal cover letter.
Estimating. Bid leveling abstract, scope-gap checklist, qualification letter.

Module 03 · Build

Build your first Skill from scratch.

A Skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file and any helpers. Twenty-five minutes from blank file to working Skill.

SKILL.md anatomy

SKILL.md

# Front matter tells Claude when to load this Skill.
---
name: submittal-review
description: Use when the user asks to review a submittal,
             flag exceptions, or draft a response in the firm format.
---
 
INSTRUCTIONSHow the firm wants this work done. Plain English.
             Imagine you are training the new project engineer.
 
EXAMPLESTwo or three real before-and-after examples.
             What a sloppy version looks like, what a good one looks like.
 
TEMPLATESThe exact format the output should take.
             Headers, fields, sign-off block, distribution list.

Common mistakes

Writing the description like marketing copy. Claude uses it to decide when to load the Skill, so it should describe the trigger, not sell the value.
No examples. Instructions tell Claude what to do. Examples tell Claude how good looks.
Trying to capture every edge case. Ship the Skill at 80 percent. The next ten edits are easier than the first one.

The first useful answer in 30 seconds test

Run the Skill cold against a real input from this week. If the first useful answer arrives inside 30 seconds, the Skill is ready to deploy. If it does not, the description, the examples, or the template is wrong. Fix the one closest to the failure.

Module 04 · Deploy

Get the team actually using it.

A Skill that nobody uses is worse than no Skill. Adoption is the hard part. Fifteen minutes on the deployment patterns that actually stick.

The kickoff conversation

rollout.txt

you ▸Here is the new Skill for submittal review.
       The trigger is: any time you would otherwise ask the senior PM
       to review a submittal before it goes back to the sub.
 
       RUN ITTry it on the next submittal that hits your inbox.
       Compare the result to what the senior PM would write.
 
       FEEDBACKSend me one line on what was right, one line
       on what was wrong. We update the Skill on Friday.

Three AEC use cases

The patterns where a Skill pays back fastest in AEC firms.

Submittal review Skill.

Encodes the spec format the firm uses, the questions the senior PM always asks, and the sign-off sheet template. Junior staff run a submittal through the Skill and get back a review that reads like the senior PM wrote it. The bottleneck on the senior PM's calendar loosens.

Friday status report Skill.

Captures the layout the owner wants, the language the principal uses, and the fields that always go in. Junior PMs produce a principal-quality update on day one instead of after a year of corrections, and the principal stops rewriting the same memo every Friday.

Go / no-go bid Skill.

Encodes the qualifying questions the principal always asks before the firm prices a job: scope fit, owner history, schedule reality, fee posture, competitive set. The Skill runs the questions against the RFP and the CRM history and returns a recommendation with reasoning. The firm stops chasing bids it would have walked away from on second thought.

Module 05 · Library

Manage the library over time.

A Skills library is a living artifact. Versioning, ownership, deprecation. The honest trade-off between building yourself and bringing in POLR.

Ownership and versioning

One named owner per Skill. The person whose process it encodes.
A short changelog at the bottom of every SKILL.md. Date, change, reason.
A quarterly review. Skills that nobody ran in 90 days get archived, not patched.

Build it yourself or bring in POLR

Build it yourself when the process lives in one person's head and that person has 90 minutes to write it down with you. Bring in POLR when the process spans three teams, the firm has been re-explaining it for years, or the Skills library is going to be 8 to 12 Skills inside 90 days.

POLR Coaching Retainers exist for the second case. We build the Skills with you, train your team to use them, and maintain the library as the firm changes.

Want eight to twelve firm-specific Skills built with your team in 90 days?

That is exactly what POLR Coaching Retainers do. We build the Skills with you, train your team to use them, and maintain the library as the firm changes.

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Part of the POLR AI Getting Started Series. POLR AI is an independent partner. We are not affiliated with Anthropic.