Claude Skills and Connectors

Skills and Connectors are newer Claude features that can significantly expand what the assistant can do. Throughout this course, you've learned how to provide Claude with context so it can give more relevant and useful responses. Skills and Connectors take that a step further by giving Claude access to your preferred workflows, reference materials, and external tools. Think of it this way:

• Skills teach Claude how you like to work;
• Connectors give Claude access to information and services outside of the chat.

To access both features, click the plus (+) icon in the chat window.

Connectors

Connectors act as bridges between Claude and the applications you already use every day. They allow Claude to access information from external tools, making its responses more relevant, personalised, and actionable.

To explore available Connectors, click Manage Connectors, then select the plus (+) icon under Enterprise Connectors. You'll see a large library of supported applications that can be connected to Claude.

Some Connectors are more useful than others depending on your workflow, but for many users the most valuable integrations are:

• Google Calendar for schedules and upcoming events
• Google Drive for documents and files
• Gmail for emails and conversations

Once connected, Claude can access information from these services and use it to help answer questions, find information, and complete tasks without requiring you to manually copy and paste content into the chat.

Skills

Skills help Claude understand how you want specific tasks performed. For example, you might create a Skill that teaches Claude your preferred writing style, formatting rules, or workflow.

You can also browse a library of pre-built Skills, including Canvas Design, Web Artifacts Builder, Theme Factory, Brand Guidelines, and more.

Each Skill includes a description explaining what it does. For example, the Brand Guidelines Skill applies Anthropic's colours and typography to relevant artifacts. You could create a similar Skill for your own company, allowing Claude to automatically generate content that follows your brand standards.