Skill, prompt, agent: three words, three things
Three words get used loosely around AI work. Getting them straight keeps the rest of this chapter clear.
A prompt
A prompt is a single instruction you give in the moment. "Summarize this document." It's a one-off. When the conversation ends, the prompt is gone. Prompts are perfect for things you do once or rarely.
A skill
A skill is a reusable playbook for a recurring task, packaged so Claude loads it automatically when that task comes up. It's not a one-off. It's the right way to do a job, captured once and used many times by many people. A skill turns "the way Maya prompts for contract reviews" into "the way the team reviews contracts."
An agent
An agent is Claude actually working a task: running the look-plan-act- check loop, taking steps, using tools. When you give the Claude CLI an instruction and watch it work, that's an agent at work.
How they fit together
These aren't competitors. They stack. An agent is Claude doing work. A skill is a playbook that agent can load to do a specific job your team's way. A prompt is how you kick any of it off.
The useful mental picture: the agent is the worker, the skill is the trained procedure that worker follows, and the prompt is you assigning the task. A new hire (agent) is capable on day one, but they're far more useful once they've been handed your team's documented procedures (skills). The next step is the practical version of this: when a job deserves a skill, and when it's fine to just prompt.
Skill, prompt, agent: three words, three things
Three words get used loosely around AI work. Getting them straight keeps the rest of this chapter clear.
A prompt
A prompt is a single instruction you give in the moment. "Summarize this document." It's a one-off. When the conversation ends, the prompt is gone. Prompts are perfect for things you do once or rarely.
A skill
A skill is a reusable playbook for a recurring task, packaged so Claude loads it automatically when that task comes up. It's not a one-off. It's the right way to do a job, captured once and used many times by many people. A skill turns "the way Maya prompts for contract reviews" into "the way the team reviews contracts."
An agent
An agent is Claude actually working a task: running the look-plan-act- check loop, taking steps, using tools. When you give the Claude CLI an instruction and watch it work, that's an agent at work.
How they fit together
These aren't competitors. They stack. An agent is Claude doing work. A skill is a playbook that agent can load to do a specific job your team's way. A prompt is how you kick any of it off.
The useful mental picture: the agent is the worker, the skill is the trained procedure that worker follows, and the prompt is you assigning the task. A new hire (agent) is capable on day one, but they're far more useful once they've been handed your team's documented procedures (skills). The next step is the practical version of this: when a job deserves a skill, and when it's fine to just prompt.