Claude AI introduces reusable Skills and token‑usage guide for efficient workflows

Anthropic’s Claude AI now offers “Skills,” reusable instruction sets that let users automate recurring tasks such as meal planning, research summarisation, fact‑checking and family organisation. A Skill stores the steps, preferences and reference files for a specific job and is invoked on demand; it does not retain personal data or learn over time. Skills are available on all plans that have code execution enabled.

A separate guide explains how Claude’s token consumption works. Tokens are counted not only for the current prompt but also for the entire active context—including conversation history, system instructions and uploaded files. Token usage can rise when conversations become long or when newer tokenisers generate more tokens for the same text. Best‑practice tips include writing focused prompts, summarising or truncating the context window, limiting file uploads to relevant sections, and selecting lighter‑weight models for simple tasks. Applying these habits can lower costs without reducing response quality.