Starter skills

Six skills you can drop in tonight.

The book teaches you to write skills. This page hands you six working ones. Open, copy, save to ~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md, and they fire on day one. By the time you finish a coffee you're operating an OS.

These are the skills I actually run across Belkins, Folderly, and the newsletter. Voice-locked. Anti-patterns included. Don't run them all on Monday — pick the one that hurts most this week.

The shortest path

Pick one (start with process-miner if you don't know where to start — it'll tell you).
Click "Copy SKILL.md".
Run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/<name>/ && pbpaste > ~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md
Open Claude Code or Cowork, say the trigger phrase. It fires.

morning-briefingDaily 7:30 AM weekdays (scheduled task)

The 6:30 AM Slack canvas you actually run.

Trigger phrases

"morning briefing", "what's on my plate today", scheduled fire

Expected output

Slack DM titled "Morning Brief — {date}" with calendar, overnight signals, pipeline motion, #1 priority.

Chapters that teach the bits

Ch 7 Ch 11 Ch 12

Save to: ~/.claude/skills/morning-briefing/SKILL.md

friday-wrapupFriday 4 PM (scheduled task)

Saturday-morning canvas that closes the week.

Trigger phrases

"friday wrap", "how did the week go", scheduled Friday 4 PM fire

Expected output

Slack canvas with the week's pipeline, revenue, SEO, leadership signal, Monday priorities.

Chapters that teach the bits

Ch 7 Ch 5 Ch 24

Save to: ~/.claude/skills/friday-wrapup/SKILL.md

deal-postmortemOn demand, fires within 24h of a deal closing lost

The "we lost X" template — no empathy, just signal.

Trigger phrases

"deal post-mortem", "we lost X", "deal autopsy"

Expected output

~250 words: the moment the deal died, what we said vs what they said, what diverged, would the same prospect close next quarter?

Chapters that teach the bits

Ch 11 Ch 28

Save to: ~/.claude/skills/deal-postmortem/SKILL.md

weekly-newsletter-draftOn demand, typically Sunday evening or Tuesday morning

Substack draft in your voice, not LinkedIn-thinkfluencer mush.

Trigger phrases

"newsletter draft", "substack draft", paste of rough scratch

Expected output

A draft with opening hook (concrete moment), three-act argument, anti-takeaway closer. ~1500-2000 words.

Chapters that teach the bits

Ch 5 Ch 17

Save to: ~/.claude/skills/weekly-newsletter-draft/SKILL.md

kill-decisionOn demand, typically quarterly review

60-day "should we shut this down" rubric.

Trigger phrases

"kill decision", "should we kill X", "is X working"

Expected output

~300 words: steelman both sides, the single metric that ends it, cost of running 60 more days, verdict.

Chapters that teach the bits

Ch 24 Ch 28

Save to: ~/.claude/skills/kill-decision/SKILL.md

process-minerScheduled Monday 9 AM (or on demand)

Scans your connected tools for repeating work you should automate next.

Trigger phrases

"what should I automate", "find me skills to build", "process mine my week"

Expected output

3-5 candidate skills ranked by leverage. Each: trigger phrase, time saved per week, SKILL.md scaffold ready to commit.

Chapters that teach the bits

Ch 5 Ch 7 Ch 11 Ch 12

Save to: ~/.claude/skills/process-miner/SKILL.md

When these six aren't enough

These six cover ~80% of the operator-shape workflows. When you need #7, read Chapter 11 — Build a Skill in 30 Minutes. When you don't know what #7 should be, run process-miner next Monday and let it tell you.

Six skills you can drop in tonight.

Edition 3 lands when this list says it does.