Creating Claude and ChatGPT skills too early can actually make your AI worse. They don't just save your process, they save your mistakes and repeat them faster every time. If you're new here, I'm Dylan. I run an AI consultancy and this exact problem comes up in almost every coaching session that I have. So, I'll show you a four-step loop I use to build skills worth trusting and two steps most people skip. So, let's get into it. There are many different ways to build skills in Claude and ChatGPT and Codex, but this is a specific loop that I recommend all my clients follow. I'm going to walk you through each one of these steps in detail including prompts that you can copy and paste and use for yourself as you work through each stage. As a quick overview before we get into the details, we first start with a mapping. So, we need to map our process before we actually encapsulate it into a skill. After you've mapped it, which is kind of an optional step, you move on to the proof step, which is completely mandatory. And this is where we actually prove the work out with an AI and get an output that we're happy with. Once we've done that, we then capture that proof into a skill. So, it's important to note that steps two and three are absolutely critical to have a high-quality skill. After you've done those two, then we move on to the patching piece because even if you follow these steps, sometimes the skill goes off the rails. And if it does, there's a very specific way you want to go about fixing it so your skill doesn't degrade even further. And those are our four steps. Now, the issue I see with a lot of people is what happens is they skip steps two and four and they tend to bake in an idea of a process into a skill without proving out the process in detail. This tends to create over-bloated skills that never meet your expectations and we want to fix that. But before we create a skill, we need to first ask ourselves, do I even need a skill for this specific process? And there's three questions you can answer before you do that. And you want to answer these questions in succession. So, you go in this order, first, second, third. So, our first question is simply asking, will I do this again? Is this a repeated task that I'll do over and over and over? If so, it might be a skill, but But we need to move on to the next question, Which is does the quality matter each time? Is there a really high quality standard you have for this task? And does it need to be consistent every single time? If yes to this, then you move on to the final question, which is simply understanding is is this specific activity something that can be done across conversations? Now, what do we mean by that? As an example, every company usually has some sort of branding guidelines. So, we have a logo, we have colors, fonts, etc. So, anytime somebody writes a proposal or creates a presentation, they have to be in line with those guidelines. Well, you can bake those brand guidelines into a skill. So, anytime somebody tries to create a presentation, they're going to follow that skill and call it. So, it makes sure that presentation meets the guidelines for the company. So, that's a skill that works across conversations. Those are three questions. So, if we answered yes to all these, we can then move into the loop process. Quick pause and then regular programming. This video is brought to you by me, as always. Two quick things. First off, below is a 30-day AI insight series, completely free. You'll get 30 insights in your inbox of how you can apply AI to your business and your work. The second thing is if you'd like to work with me, below are a series of offerings to see if there's a good fit between the two of us. Now, let's get back to the video. And the first step here is mapping. Again, this is optional, but it is a booster if you want to start with a really detailed process to begin the next phase. And my recommendation for mapping out that process is doing an AI interview. If you've watched any of my videos in the past, you've probably heard me talk about this. Where what you're going to do is you're going to have the AI ask you one question at a time. Every answer you provide is going to inform the next question the AI asks. And we want it to do one question at a time. And I usually recommend 13 to 15 questions. This is the happy medium. It's not too many to overwhelm you and not too few to not provide value. And here's a prompt that you can use for this. So, in this prompt, we're asking the AI, "I want you to create a skill for this recurring task." Then you fill in that blank yourself. Then we're saying up front, "I do not want you to create this skill yet. Instead, what I want you to do is I want you to ask me one question at a time. Cap the interview at 15 questions. Your goal for this interview is is understand this specific task and detail associated to the inputs for the task, the outputs, the quality standards, common mistakes, edge case