Skills

Skills are instructions Claude Code loads on its own when a task matches their description. Claude Maxxing installs its skills in ~/.claude/skills/, so they are available in every session. The copies name the real folders of your install (code, workspace, state), so they stay right when the installer used other paths than the defaults; maxxing init (run by every update) writes them again.

Shipped skills

Skill	Claude uses it when
`memory`	an exchange produced something durable: it records it in the right memory.md
`memory-compaction`	memory files grew too long or contradictory (also run daily by a job)
`maxxing-setup`	you say "set up Harness Maxxing", or want to finish/verify an installation
`maxxing-doctor`	something does not work: UI down, sessions failing, jobs not running
`maxxing-telegram`	you configure or troubleshoot the Telegram bridge
`maxxing-backup`	you configure, run or restore the backup, or move to a new server
`maxxing-cron`	you want something to happen on a schedule
`maxxing-tasks`	you talk about your tasks or the board
`maxxing-feed`	you say "notify me when…", or want sales, orders, deployments, e-mails or a script's results reported (webhooks, `maxxing feed post`)
`maxxing-mcp`	you want Claude to use a service through MCP ("connect the Google Ads MCP"), an MCP tool is missing or needs a sign-in
`maxxing-extension`	you want a dashboard widget (Card, or HTML: a game, a canvas) or a custom page
`maxxing-customize`	you want to change the product itself, or an update reports that your customizations need adapting
`video-motion-design`	you ask for a video, an animation, a short / reel or a trailer (Remotion, see Videos, PDFs and images)
`pdf-document`	you ask for a PDF: a quote, an invoice, a report, a guide
`image-edit`	you want images resized, converted, compressed or batch-processed
`seo-audit`	you ask for an SEO audit or why a site does not rank
`web-scraping`	you want data collected from a website (prices, catalogue, listings…) or a page watched for changes

You can also name a skill explicitly: "use the maxxing-doctor skill".

maxxing init and maxxing update keep these up to date. They overwrite only the product skills (names starting with maxxing-, plus memory, memory-compaction, video-motion-design, pdf-document, image-edit, seo-audit and web-scraping). If a skill with one of those names already existed, it is moved to /var/lib/claude-maxxing/trash/skills/ first.

Adding your own skills

Create a folder with a SKILL.md:

~/.claude/skills/blog-article/SKILL.md            user level: available in every session
/root/maxxing/.claude/skills/blog-article/SKILL.md  workspace level: included in the memory backup

---
name: blog-article
description: Write and publish a blog article for the Acme blog. Use when asked for a new article, a draft, or the next subject of the editorial plan.
---

# Blog article

1. Pick the next subject in projects/acme/topics/blog/plan.md ...
2. ...

Tips: - The description decides when Claude uses the skill: say what it does and when to use it. - Keep the body a precise procedure: steps, paths, commands, checks, what never to do. - Every skill's name and description is sent with every prompt of every session. Past Claude Code's budget (about 8,000 characters), the descriptions of the least used skills are dropped and Claude picks them less reliably - maxxing doctor shows the total. Keep a skill that only one project uses in that project (projects/<p>/.claude/skills/: loaded only in its topics), or add disable-model-invocation: true to its frontmatter so only you can call it (/name). - Put helper scripts next to SKILL.md and reference them by path. - Ask Claude to write the skill for you after you have done a task together once: "turn what we just did into a skill". - Custom skills are never overwritten by updates. Skills under <workspace>/.claude/skills/ are included in the backup; user-level skills in ~/.claude/skills/ are not. - Check how your Claude Code version discovers project-level skills (claude --help, Claude Code docs) if a workspace skill is not picked up in a topic session; the user level always works.