Claude Code

Claude Code skills let you extend a coding agent with custom workflows, specialist knowledge, and automation. You write a SKILL.md file with instructions, and the agent follows them. At least, that’s the idea. In practice, Claude treats skill content as advice, not as instructions. A skill that says “always use spec-kit to create the specification” might get followed, or Claude might decide it already has enough context from the brainstorming phase to write the spec directly. It’s being helpful, but it’s also wrong. This post describes patterns for dealing with that challenge, from scripts that enforce consistency to hooks that block shortcuts before they happen.