Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Skills are reusable AI instructions that give Claude intentionality and direction by pre-loading context and constraints, transforming it from a generically competent tool into one that produces work aligned with your specific standards and goals.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

A solopreneur or small business owner running paid ads or email campaigns who uses Claude Code and wants to structure prompts as reusable skills instead of one-off requests.
A marketer or operator with 1-3 years of Claude experience who understands basic prompting but hasn't yet organized workflows into skills and wants to see real examples.
Someone building internal AI tools or sales/marketing automation who needs to understand how to write skills that maintain context and produce consistent, directional outputs across multiple uses.

SKIP IF…

You have no experience with Claude Code or AI prompting — this assumes you already know how to use Claude and focuses on structural best practices, not fundamentals.
You're looking for a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up Claude Code itself or install these specific skills — this is a conceptual breakdown, not a setup guide.
You work primarily in non-marketing domains like fiction writing, research, or software development — the examples are marketing-specific and don't translate well to other fields.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Claude Code skills are reusable mega-prompts that give the AI direction and intentionality, so it does the right work instead of decent work in the wrong direction. The mechanism is a simple skill.md file with metadata plus a workflow that gathers context upfront � audience, budget, goals, platform � then enforces best practices, naming conventions, and output format the same way a hired consultant would scope an engagement. Install a marketplace plugin or drop the markdown into a .claude/skills folder, then invoke by name or let Claude trigger it from intent. Treat open-source packs as a starting template: use them, learn the structure, then rewrite each one in your own voice so the outputs match how you actually think and ship.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 01:05

01 · Hook + skills thesis

Cold open with the core claim: skills give Claude Code direction and intentionality. Without them it does a decent job in the wrong direction.

01:05 – 01:38

02 · Channel intro + caveats

#BUILDINGWITHAI nameplate. Explicit callout: learn to write your own skills so you can build better ones.

01:38 – 04:23

03 · Skill anatomy — paid ads walkthrough

GitHub repo coreyhayes31/marketingskills. Opens paid-ads skill file. Walks through name/description meta, Before Starting context section, Campaign Goals, Platform Selection Guide, Campaign Best Structures, Naming Conventions, Budget Allocation Framework, Ad Copy Frameworks.

04:23 – 06:17

04 · Installation demo

Shows three install paths. Installs via Claude Code plugin marketplace. Restarts in Ghostty terminal. Notes the marketing-skills prefix on skill invocations.

06:17 – 10:19

05 · Demo 1: Email Sequence

Invokes marketing skills email-sequence for a Castos YouTube growth webinar promoting Outlier SaaS. Claude generates a 6-email sequence. Craig reviews the email sequence skill Core Principles mid-cook.

10:19 – 13:48

06 · Demo 2: Page CRO on outlier.so

Invokes marketing skills page-cro on outlier.so. Claude returns strengths and gaps: 5-second test problem, no product demo video, CTA not outcomes-focused. Craig agrees on most points.

13:48 – 15:32

07 · So what + how to adapt

Don't install all 20 skills. Pick what applies. Copy the markdown, make it yours, rewrite it to think like you do.

15:32 – 16:16

08 · Subscribe CTA

Warm subscribe ask. Subscribed lower-third animation.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

A Claude Code skill is a mega-prompt you write once that gives Claude direction and intentionality — without it, Claude does a decent job but often in the wrong direction.
Corey Haynes's 20-skill open-source marketing pack covers paid ads, email sequences, CRO audits, competitor analysis, and copywriting — each installable as a single /plugin command.
The 'gather context before starting' section at the top of a skill is what makes a skill structurally powerful — it ensures Claude asks the right setup questions before executing.
A paid ads skill asks the same questions a senior consultant would ask before touching a campaign: goals, CPA targets, budget, platform, and whether the campaign is new or established.
Installing a skill at the repository level (not user level) means every collaborator on the project gets access without individual setup — the skill becomes team infrastructure.
Skills can be invoked implicitly (say 'optimize this landing page for conversions' and the CRO skill auto-activates) or explicitly via slash commands (/page-cro, /email-sequence).
The best way to build a better skill is to study someone else's well-structured skill and learn why their context-gathering, workflow, and naming conventions work — not just copy-paste theirs.
A skill that encodes platform-specific best practices (TikTok skews younger, Twitter has lower CPMs) removes the need for the user to specify platform logic in every prompt.
Ghosty (a terminal emulator wrapper) is a lighter alternative to running Claude Code inside VS Code or Cursor when the only requirement is a terminal with a better UI.
The SEO Machine open-source project is a Claude Code co-writing system for long-form, SEO-optimized content that the marketing skill pack can be layered on top of.
Running /slash inside Claude Code after installing skills surfaces all available commands in a searchable list — the quickest way to discover what the installed skills can do.
Skills compound over time: the more domain-specific skills you accumulate in a project, the fewer setup instructions each prompt needs because the context is pre-loaded.

Takeaway

The briefing is the skill.

Skills architecture playbook

A skill is not a prompt. It is a pre-briefed specialist who already knows your context before they start.

Every skill should open with Before Starting - gather this context if not provided.
Ask the questions a consultant would ask on day one: goals, audience, budget, platform, existing data.
The rest of the skill file is the consultant's expertise - structured output, best practices, frameworks.
Don't install generic packs wholesale. Pick the skills that match your current sprint and rewrite them to think like you.
The mega-prompt you don't write every time framing is the pitch for MCN+ members - every skill saves 20 minutes of context-setting per session.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Claude Code: Anthropic's command-line coding agent that runs in a terminal and can read, write, and execute code across an entire project.
Skill: A reusable markdown file that loads a structured set of instructions, context, and workflows into an AI agent so it performs a specific task consistently. Acts like a saved mega-prompt with built-in guardrails.
Mega prompt: A long, detailed prompt that bundles role, context, rules, and output format into a single reusable block instead of a one-line instruction.
Markdown file: A plain-text file using lightweight formatting syntax (headings, lists, bold) commonly used to write documentation, prompts, and AI instructions.
CPA (cost per acquisition): The average ad spend required to acquire one paying customer or lead, used as a key efficiency metric in paid advertising.
ROAS (return on ad spend): Revenue generated divided by ad spend, expressed as a ratio, used to judge whether a paid campaign is profitable.
CPM: Cost per thousand ad impressions. A lower CPM means cheaper reach on a given platform.
Campaign / ad set / ad: The three-tier structure used by ad platforms like Meta: a campaign sets the objective, ad sets define audience and budget, and ads are the individual creatives shown to users.
CRO (conversion rate optimization): The practice of analyzing and improving a page or funnel so a higher percentage of visitors take a desired action like signing up or buying.
Nurture sequence: An automated series of emails sent over time to build trust with a subscriber and move them toward a purchase without an immediate hard sell.
Five-second test: A usability check where a new visitor sees a page for five seconds and must be able to state what the product is and who it's for. If they can't, the headline or hero is failing.
Programmatic SEO: A strategy of generating large numbers of templated pages targeting long-tail search queries by combining a structured dataset with a repeatable page format.
Schema markup: Structured data added to a webpage's HTML that tells search engines what the content represents, helping pages qualify for rich results and answer boxes.
Plugin marketplace: A registry inside Claude Code that lets users discover and install bundles of skills, commands, and agents from a shared source like a GitHub repo.
Slash command: A shortcut typed in a chat or terminal interface, starting with a forward slash, that triggers a specific named action or skill.
GitHub repo: A project hosted on GitHub containing code, documentation, and version history that anyone with access can clone, fork, or download.
Open source: Software released with its source code publicly available under a license that lets others use, modify, and redistribute it freely.
CLI: Command-line interface — a way to use software by typing commands in a terminal rather than clicking through a graphical interface.
Terminal emulator: A desktop application that provides a window for running command-line programs. Ghostty is one example known for a cleaner, faster interface.
Playwright: An open-source browser automation tool that can load a webpage, render it like a real browser, and capture screenshots or interact with elements — useful when an AI needs to see visual layout, not just text.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

00:29linkMarketing Skills by Corey Haynes ↗

13:32productOutlier ↗

03:03toolGhostty terminal ↗

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

00:11

“Skills are what gives Claude Code direction. And I like to say intentionality because it can do a good job, but just kind of in the wrong direction a lot of times.”

Tight thesis statement, no setup needed, broadly applicable→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

02:55

“Imagine you were hiring a paid acquisition consultant and you just came in and said, fix my Facebook ads. They would probably ask you all of these questions.”

Strong analogy that makes the abstract concrete→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

04:01

“A skill is like a mega-prompt that you don't have to write every time.”

One-sentence definition, endlessly quotable→ Newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

15:40

“What AI does when you don't like it isn't wrong. It's just not what you want.”

Reframes AI frustration constructively, strong closer→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

analogy

00:00Claude Code is hands down the most powerful AI tool in the world today. And when you add on skills to Claude Code, it becomes superhuman.

00:09And I guess pun intended, but really skills are what gives Claude code direction. And I like to say intentionality because it can do a good job, but just kind of in the wrong direction a lot of times.

00:21And with skills, you're able to say like, hey, this is good. This is what I want it to look like. This how I want this kind of thing that you do to feel and look and be.

00:29And today, we're gonna go over a set of marketing skills from a friend of mine and probably one of the best marketing minds I know. His name is Corey Haynes. He open source a set of marketing skills on GitHub.

00:41I'll put a link in the description below. But I wanna walk through what we can take away from both marketing and creating skills from these examples.

00:50And hey, if we haven't met before, my name is Craig Hewitt. Welcome back to the channel. Channel here is all about how we can use AI to move ourselves and our business forward to create the best possible life we can because I believe AI is the best force for good probably in my lifetime outside of my family.

01:07But and today, I wanna talk about skills. I have a whole video on the channel and I'll put a link in the description below all about skills and why they're so important and how to create them. And I have my own bundle of skills, but I wanna walk through Corey's skills because I think there's a lot we can learn from them because they're really really good.

01:24So as we're going to create new skills for ourselves, our projects and our businesses, don't just copy things, but learn how to do them yourself. So when it's time to create your skill, you can go do it and create better skills so you get better outcomes from Cloud Code.

01:36Okay? So here we are in GitHub. And I just wanna talk through how a skill is kinda set up.

01:43So a skill so we have the skills folder here. And these are in separate folders each. So there's one for copywriting, one for editing, one for competitor awareness, free tools, uh, pop ups.

01:54Right? So let's just open the paid ads one. And you see all it is is a skill dot m d file.

01:59So it's a markdown file. And so let's open this and it has a bit of meta at the top where it has a name and it has a description. This is kind of what makes a skill a skill from a requirements perspective.

02:10But let's talk about the workflow and the context setting that goes into these skills that makes them so powerful. So we have a section here at the top, which is before starting.

02:21Gather this context if not provided. So what does this do for us? Well, to me, this says like, hey, I wanna make sure my project, this thing I'm doing understands who I am, what I'm trying to achieve, who my business is, what my customer is, all these kinds of things.

02:35Right? What's the and this is a paid ads skill. Right?

02:39So we're using this to optimize paid ads. So what are the goals of the campaigns? Traffic, awareness, leads, do I have a target CPA or return on ad spend?

02:48What's the budget? Okay. What am I selling?

02:50Who am I selling it to? Has this been running for a while or is it brand new? Okay.

02:54So imagine you were hiring a paid acquisition consultant and you just came in and said like, hey, fix my Facebook ads.

03:02They would probably ask you all of these questions. Right? And so Corey is very smartly saying, hey, set the stage for what we're trying to do here.

03:09Give me the context so I know what I'm doing and what you want so I can go do a good job. And so what platform are we on? Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok.

03:19Right? If any of these, this is kinda what this means to your ad campaign.

03:26TikTok skews younger, Twitter lower CPMs. Right?

03:29Okay. So cool. Now we have campaign best structures.

03:33Okay. So account should look like this. We have an account.

03:35We have a campaign. It has an ad set, and it has multiple ads. Yep.

03:39Makes sense. Naming conventions. Really important in Facebook ads or any kind of ads.

03:43So because you're gonna have multiple campaigns and ad sets and ads, if and you're naming all of them differently, you're not gonna know how to go in there and kinda figure out what's what. Testing phase. Right?

03:53So without like dissecting every single piece of this, what I wanna say is like, at a high level, a skill is like a mega prompt that you don't have to write every time.

04:06Right? So if I we're gonna install these skills in just a minute so you can see what this looks like. But if I was gonna go optimize of an ad campaign of mine, I would just use the paid ad skill, and it would load all of this in and ask me questions about it.

04:22Okay. So let's do that now. So let's go back to the main repo page and figure out how to install these skills, and then we'll use a couple of them and show you what it's all about.

04:33Okay. Okay. So it's a so you have a couple of ways you can install it as a CLI skill.

04:40That's cool. I'm gonna install it as a Claude code plugin because I use Claude code. So let me open up a new project in Claude code and we'll and we'll install these.

04:49Okay. So here I am in my, uh, Castos writer project.

04:54And and just for context, this is kind of a fork in a customized version of SEO machine that I have. So this is an open source cloud code project that is meant for content writing, landing pages, blog posts, long form content that's SEO optimized.

05:08So you can go and download and use this and has all sorts of cool slash command stuff. We're gonna install Corey's packet of marketing skills in this to make it not just a SEO writing tool, but just a overall marketing tool.

05:20Okay? So let's go back over here, and we'll just install this via the marketplace. So we're gonna create Corey's plug in marketplace.

05:29Cool. That's done. And then install the marketing skills plug in.

05:33Install for all collaborators in this repository.

05:38So I shared this project with team members of mine. And so I would want this to be for everyone who uses this, not just for me locally, which would be this option here.

05:47And I don't want this across all of my projects. So I want this on this repository, but for everybody who use this repository.

05:52Cool. Okay. So that's happening, and that's all done.

05:56Restart Claude code to load new plugins. Okay. So I'm gonna say quit, and then I'm just gonna say Claude.

06:02Okay. And by the way, I'm in a terminal emulator called Ghosty here. I really like Ghosty.

06:06It's kind of like just a nicer looking terminal. I'm not using Versus code or cursor or anything like that these days. I just find it's a little too heavy for what I wanna do most of the time.

06:15Cool. So now we have a bunch of skills and if we hit slash, we can see all of the skills that we have here.

06:22And if we go down, we could just go through all of these. Right?

06:26Okay. And so back in the GitHub repo, I have different ways that you can use this.

06:31So you can use it just in context, help me optimize this landing page for conversions, and it will invoke the page dash CRO skill. That's cool. So we're gonna try that.

06:39And then we're gonna invoke it directly by using a slash command, so like page CRO or email sequence. So let's try the email sequence one first, and we're gonna run a webinar at Kastasun that is all about kinda how to win on YouTube.

06:54And so I'm gonna have it do that. So so what do I call this? Email sequence is the name here.

06:59So I'll say email these are not loading.

07:04Okay. So I I installed this and I was having a bit of trouble with it because the slash commands weren't working. And so I just said, you know, Cloud Code is super smart.

07:11So I just said, hey. Is the marketing skills plugin installed? And it said, yes.

07:14The marketing skills plugin is installed. You can invoke these with, oh, marketing skills and then skill name. Okay.

07:21So it's not just a slash command, but you have to do marketing skills and then email sequence.

07:34Cool. And you see it turned blue here. That means that, like, it recognized this as as a skill.

07:39Okay. Cool. So, you know, this is this is, a little bit long.

07:42I wonder if I installed it via CLI, if it would just be a slash command like this. Because the rest of my slash commands are don't have this kind of, like, root to it, and it may be just how I installed this. I'm not really sure.

07:53Okay. So we're gonna do a webinar. So I'm just gonna describe the webinar.

07:56So we're doing a webinar at Castos to teach our customers how to win on YouTube.

08:03It is gonna pull from my experience doing a hundred days of AI and publishing a hundred days of YouTube videos in a row and growing my channel from 250 to over 12,000 subscribers. One of the big things about this is we wanna promote our new SaaS tool called Outlier, so outlier.so, in this webinar series.

08:23So craft me a email sequence to kinda plant the seed for this webinar, preannounce it, announce it, and then a couple of follow ups to get people on board. I don't have a landing page or anything yet, but you just do your best.

08:38Okay. So like that should be all that you have to do. And this skill so let's go look at this email sequence skill while this is cooking here.

08:46So we'll go into skills and email sequence and go and open the skill file.

08:52So you're an expert in email marketing automation. Your goal is to create email sequence that nurses relationship drive to action moves people towards conversions. Cool.

08:59The sequence type. Right? So I told it what it is.

09:02So it's in a nurture sequence or event based sequence.

09:08Who are they? What trigger? Right?

09:10Okay. So cool. It's probably gonna ask me for more context.

09:13Core principles. This is really smart. One email, one job.

09:16Value before ask. I think that's fair. Relevance over volume and clear path forward.

09:21So how many emails are gonna be in the sequence? How far apart are they gonna be? So these are things like the way I look at skills is like Claude code probably would get most of this right, but some of it wouldn't be right.

09:31And it's not really Claude code's fault that it's wrong. It's just you didn't tell it. So now I'm just telling it all of this stuff that Corey, who again is like an expert marketer, has laid all out.

09:42Cool. So let's go back to Cloud Code and see what it did.

09:48So cooked all this up. Here's a six email sequence to build anticipation and drive registrations for YouTube growth Mobinar. Cool.

09:56So subject, I grew from 250 to 12,000 subscribers in a hundred days. Here's what I learned. Cool.

10:02That's that's pretty good. So and then email 2 is the preannouncement. Email 3 is the official announcement five or six days before.

10:11Cool. Email 4, value and reminder. Cool.

10:15Okay. So that's great. Now let's do another one.

10:19Marketing skill, and we wanna do page CRO.

10:29Oh, that's not the that's not the format. Oh, marketing skills.

10:37Okay. So, again, slash marketing skills, page CRO.

10:41So it's gonna analyze a page and tell me why or why it doesn't convert well. So let's do this for our new tool at Outlier. Analyze this page, the landing page for outlieroutlier.so.

10:54Tell me why it works well and why it doesn't. Use best practices from your skill to guide this and ask me any clarifying questions you have.

11:05So, you know, this is gonna go out and look at this URL, and then it's gonna so can I fetch the skill? Yes. Or can I fetch this page?

11:12Yes. You can. But then in the background, it's loading all of the context in this skill.

11:19Let's just pull up the page CRO skill.

11:25Conversion rate optimization expert. Your goal is to analyze marketing pages and provide actionable recommendations to approve conversion rates.

11:33Pretty cool. So, again, like, it's saying it's giving the, like remember when, gosh, two years ago with, like, prompting and saying, like, you are a conversion rate optimization specialist, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

11:47Like, that's part of it. Right? But then, like, format things, you know, this is how I want the data back.

11:53These are different types of pages and how you should think about them. Experiments that I can run on this page to help improve it, pricing, demo, CTAs, all this kind of stuff.

12:04Cool. Okay. So it came back with some stuff and probably some questions.

12:10So it's a SaaS landing page prelaunch because we are early access. We go to outlier data. So as of the release of this video, we'll still be probably early access by February 1, so we'll be opening up to everyone for YouTube creators, particularly smaller channels.

12:25What's working well? Cool. Good.

12:28I love to hear that. What could be stronger? The five second test problem.

12:33While steal like a creator is memorable, a cold visitor might not immediately understand what the product is. Okay. I I agree with that.

12:40Like, we wanted to kinda make a a splash with that headline. The hero section lacks visual proof. You're selling visual tools like thumbnail and video discovery, but the hero doesn't show the product in action.

12:52I don't know that I agree with that. Let's just go to the page as it exists today.

12:59Like it shows the tool right here. So so maybe they're saying like, hey, this image could be better. I will say though that, like, this the way that it grabbed this page, it's just getting the text.

13:11So I don't know. Like, you would need something like Playwright to go look at the page, which I don't think this is doing. Social proof could be more specific.

13:20Yeah. We're early access, so, like, we don't have any customers yet. So so that's fine.

13:25CTA could be more outcomes focused. Yep. I agree with that.

13:29And when we do go from early access to opening it up, we we definitely will do that. No video for a video tool. Absence of video feels like a missed opportunity.

13:37Yep. I agree. I should do that, and I should do that today.

13:41Add a product screenshot, which I have. I just didn't know this. So cool.

13:45Like, that's great. And then we can go down the rabbit hole. What's your current conversion rate?

13:49Where's your traffic coming from? Do you have any beta users? What's your timeline like for launch?

13:53So cool. Okay. So what's the kinda let's bring this home.

13:56What's the so what with this? The so what for this, the marketing skills, is if you're using Cloud Code for marketing, you should check it out and you should install it.

14:07There's a lot of skills here. Right? Let's if we go back into the skills folder, there's a lot of skills here.

14:13Do you need all these? Maybe not. Could you pick and choose some of them?

14:16A 100%. And and like what I probably yeah. Like, I'm not gonna launch all the time, so I don't need this launch skill in my folder all the time.

14:24Marketing psychology, paid ads. Like, I'm running a bunch of paid ads, would want this in there all the time, but I might not want it all the time.

14:30You know, social content, SEO audit, schema markup. Like, some of these things might not apply all the time. Some of them might apply all the time.

14:37And and so, like, all you could do is, like, just take this markdown file, right, and copy and paste it into your cloud project.

14:46That's all it is. Like and so you have a dot cloud folder in the top of your cloud project and just create a skills folder and then create programmatic SEO and just copy and paste it in there. Or you can download the whole thing and put it in there.

14:57But I like to understand what's going on with my skills, and I probably like to tweak and clean them up and make them my own a little bit. So I might just take this and work with it and use it for a while, and then be like, cool.

15:09I'm gonna delete all of it, and then I'm gonna make this my own. Because, like, I have my own set of skills that I like because they think and work like I do. I would encourage you to do the same thing.

15:19So take what Corey's done here as a starting place. Maybe use it, get to know it.

15:24Right? And then figure out what you don't like and adapt it to be exactly what you want. Cool.

15:29So skills, super powerful in getting any AI system, Claude or Claude code, to do more of what you want like you want it.

15:40It's kinda like guardrails for AI because, like, what AI does when you don't like it isn't wrong. It's just not like what you want. And skills just give that kind of preference and intentionality again to it.

15:51So check it out. Link will be in the description below. Link will be in the description below as well for my bundle of marketing skills.

15:57Maybe check both of them out and decide which one you like best. And if this was valuable to you and you got something out of this and you're gonna go implement this in your business, please consider subscribing. Really, it means a lot to me and the channel and keeps me coming back to create more videos like this for you and the community in the future.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Craig Hewitt opens without preamble: Claude Code is the most powerful AI tool alive, and skills are what turn it from a generalist into a specialist. The title promises twelve of them, and twelve is exactly what Corey Haynes open-sourced for the world to steal.

Frameworks