Agent Skills extend Claude's capabilities through organized folders of instructions, scripts, and resources. This guide shows you how to use both pre-built and custom Skills with the Claude API.

For complete API reference including request/response schemas and all parameters, see:

• Skill Management API Reference - CRUD operations for Skills
• Skill Versions API Reference - Version management

To learn how zero data retention (ZDR) applies to this feature, see API and data retention.

本篇目录

• Quick links
• Overview
• Using Skills in Messages
• Managing custom Skills
• How Skills are loaded
• Use cases
• Limits and constraints
• Best practices
• Migrate from skills-2025-10-02
• Data retention
• Audit logging
• Next steps