Did you miss us terribly? Normal Mindstream service resumes tomorrow. We’re refreshed and ready to deliver. Hopefully. I can’t say for sure as I’m writing this in July. Maybe we’ll come back more drained and less motivated than ever?

-MV

What’s in store:

Read Time: 5 minutes

CREATOR COLUMN

'Record a skill' in Claude

For two years, I have done one job entirely by hand.

I have a system that helps me build content for every channel.

The missing piece was the scheduling. Every post gets re-cut for Threads, X and Facebook and dropped into Buffer, one platform at a time.

So I recorded myself doing it once. Claude watched the whole thing and turned it into a skill that now runs it for me.

No prompt or instructions typed out. I showed it, and it built the skill.

That is Anthropic's new Record a skill. If you have never made one, a skill is just a job you teach Claude once and run again on command.

Normally you teach it by writing the steps out. This lets you show them instead, and it lives in Cowork on the Claude desktop app (you need a paid plan, Pro, Max or Team).

In this issue:

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I recorded the whole thing in a quick video. Watch it first, then read the rest.

Record your first skill

You would never hand a new teammate a hundred numbered steps and walk off. You would sit with them for ten minutes and show them.

Claude learns the same way now. Nail the recording and you nail the skill, so here is how to get it right.

Step 1: Open Cowork and start recording.

Open the Claude desktop app and select Cowork. Click the plus icon and choose Record a skill.

Claude asks permission to record your screen and watch what you do. Read the warning first: do not type passwords or secrets, or show private conversations, while it is rolling.

Then hit “Start Recording”.

Step 2: Do the job once, for real.

Pick something you actually repeat. I chose content repurposing, the one job I have never automated.

I opened the post in my Notion calendar, grabbed the caption and the image, then went to Buffer to schedule it.

Then the fiddly part. On Threads, a long caption has to be split into a proper thread. X needs a tighter version. Facebook keeps the longer form. I did all of it by hand, exactly as I do every week.

Step 3: Narrate as you go, and stay on task.

Say what you are doing and why, out loud. Claude reads the screen and listens, and the why is what it turns into the skill.

The one habit that makes or breaks it: do not get sidetracked. Claude captures every single click. Wander into an unrelated tab, and it assumes that is part of the job too, then repeats it every time you run the skill.

Step 4: Stop, and let Claude propose the skill.

Hit stop. Claude takes the recording and gets to work.

It read my demo back to me first:

“I can see from your recording that you're building a repeatable content-repurposing workflow... The narration makes clear you want this captured as a reusable skill. Let me set that up.”

Then it split the build across three sub-agents.

Out came a skill it named repurpose-to-buffer, with the exact steps I showed it. One nice touch: it did not just record my mouse clicks to replay them. It worked out the proper tool for each step, reading Notion through a connector and driving the browser only where it had to.

Step 5: Save it, then test it before you trust it.

Press Save Skill. Then open a fresh chat and run it with a slash command, /repurpose-to-buffer (or whatever Claude named yours).

Testing now is your one chance to refine it before it fires for real.

It runs through Claude in Chrome, which can do almost anything a person can in a browser. In the desktop app, turn on Control Chrome and grant the permissions as they pop up.

Without it, Claude cannot act on your Chrome, and nothing happens.

Then watch it go. Claude opened Buffer, pasted the caption, split the thread, ticked the right channels, and queued the post. The job I have done by hand for two years, running itself.

Say this while you record

The recording is only as good as your narration. Replace anything in [BRACKETS] with your own words, and talk through it like this:

Say this:

I'm doing [TASK] so that [OUTCOME].
First I [ACTION], because [REASON].
Now I [NEXT ACTION], and the reason is [WHY].
This next bit is the tricky part: [THE RULE THAT CHANGES BY CASE OR PLATFORM]. That is the whole job. Anything I clicked that was not part of it, ignore.

Say the why for every step. That is the part Claude turns into the skill.

Make it run every morning

Testing it once is nice. A system is better.

So I gave it one line.

Paste this:

Let's make this a scheduled task. Ask me when it should run, then set it up.

Claude asked how and when I wanted it to run.

Then it built the scheduled task, every step written out, set to run on weekdays at 8am.

One honest caveat. Because this drives your real browser, your Mac has to be awake and signed into Buffer for it to run. This is not the cloud kind that works while your laptop is shut.

If the machine is asleep when it fires, it will not half-publish. It sends you the prepped post and stops.

Show it, don't tell it

The skill you build this way is not a prompt. It is a recording of you doing the job right, once.

Type instructions and you get Claude's best guess at your process. Show it and you get your process.

The catch is the same one as always. It copies exactly what you do, the clean parts and the sloppy ones. So do the boring job properly one last time, then hand it over for good.

Run the whole thing yourself

Recording one skill is how you retire one manual job. Stringing them together is the system I run my content on: the research, the writing, the design, all of it.

That is the LinkedIn AI OS, and I just opened it up today.

It is in Alpha, so I am taking people in small batches.

If you want the exact system behind my LinkedIn, apply below.

Apply to the LinkedIn AI OS Alpha.

One ask: only apply if you have opened Claude Code before. This alpha is for people helping me refine it before the wider launch.

Stay curious, stay human, and show it; don't tell it.

You can get our complete guide to Claude at work below!

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