Claude instructions vs skills: where to save your tone and workflows

Save a preference where you want it to apply

If you keep asking Claude to avoid jargon, put that preference in account instructions. If you keep pasting a detailed procedure for reviewing customer emails, make that procedure a skill. If the rule concerns one customer's terminology or audience, keep it in that customer's project instructions.

The difference is how broadly you want the instruction used. A general preference can improve many kinds of conversations, while a specialized format can become intrusive outside its intended task. Anthropic's personalization guide describes account instructions, project instructions and skills as different ways to customize Claude.

Location	What belongs there	Example
Account instructions	Preferences across your conversations.	Explain unfamiliar terminology when first used.
Project instructions	Requirements tied to that project's work.	This customer's readers are first-time buyers.
Skill	A reusable procedure or task-specific style.	Review customer emails using a consistent rubric.
Current request	The input and desired result for this task.	Review this draft and suggest edits without sending it.

Suppose you review emails for several clients. The review procedure can remain the same, while the client's product information and preferred terminology change. Keeping the procedure in one skill lets you revise it once. The client-specific facts still need to accompany the work rather than becoming permanent assumptions in every review.

If you are looking for the old Styles control

A Reddit discussion shows users trying to find and enable their writing styles after seeing a migration-to-Skills message. Some commenters can find an item to enable, while others report that it is absent from their list.

As of October 26, 2026, Claude's official personalization page directs users to skills for task-specific tone and formatting. For a preference you want everywhere, use account instructions. For a writing mode you want only on certain work, inspect the relevant item in Customize → Skills and enable it if present. If an old item is absent, use a copy of your original instructions to rebuild the behavior rather than assuming it is active invisibly.

A permanent “use plain English” preference and an occasional “write this customer announcement in a formal voice” preference need different scopes. The latter should not automatically dictate the tone of a personal brainstorming session.

Write account instructions as observable behavior

The current documented route is your initials → Settings → Your Claude → Instructions. In the older Settings layout, the labels are Account and Instructions for Claude. The new Claude experience also incorporates Cowork's former Global instructions into this setting. Use the current settings instructions rather than an old screenshot alone.

Here is an illustrative preference, designed for someone who uses Claude for explanations and comparisons:

“Use plain English. Keep product and menu names accurate. When comparing options, explain the practical differences before recommending one. Label estimates and tell me which missing input would change your answer.”

Those requests describe behavior you can see in an answer. “Be excellent and professional” gives you less to evaluate. Similarly, a universal three-sentence limit can interfere with a task that needs a sequence of steps. A conditional preference, such as keeping simple answers short while retaining necessary procedure steps, expresses the intent more accurately.

When an answer disappoints you, edit the relevant requirement instead of accumulating broad warnings. If a table-based explanation lacks traceability, ask for the table name and row label beside each referenced figure. That provides a specific correction for the next answer.

Keep a client's facts and constraints with the project

In the standard project interface described by Anthropic, select Set project instructions, enter the requirements, and save them with Save instructions. These instructions apply to conversations within that project. The project management guide also explains adding reference material.

For example, a customer-support project might say that readers are new users, that technical terms need a short explanation, and that release dates must come from supplied product material. The actual product sheet belongs with the project material. A sentence telling Claude to use that sheet cannot substitute for providing it.

This distinction matters when you reuse the same email-review skill for another client. Keep the review method reusable, but provide the new client's documentation and audience. Otherwise, an example written for the first client can quietly become an assumption about the second.

A useful skill explains the process and its exceptions

Anthropic describes skills as instructions and resources Claude loads when relevant. Simple skills can use written instructions without custom code. More involved ones may include reference files or scripts. A skill is appropriate when you repeatedly want the same method applied to changing inputs.

For the email-review example, the procedure might be:

“Use this when reviewing a draft customer email. Check that the requested action is clear, each deadline comes from the supplied material, and product claims have support. Suggest replacement wording for problems. Keep unresolved factual questions in a separate list. Return suggested edits; do not send the message.”

Add an example that reveals the judgment you expect. A draft saying “the feature launches next week” without a supplied release date should produce a factual question. An email with a confirmed date should preserve that date while improving the wording around it. Save both examples with the procedure so its treatment of missing information is explicit.

The custom-skill guide recommends focused tasks, clear usage conditions, examples and testing. Apply that advice by describing when the skill should run. “Review customer email drafts before approval” is more informative than “communications expert.” Avoid turning one skill into a collection of unrelated preferences for every kind of task.

Enable the skill and give it a concrete input

Claude's current usage guide lists Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise support. In an individual account, enable code execution and file creation under Settings → Capabilities, then turn the skill on in Customize → Skills. The capability is labeled Create and edit files in the updated Settings layout. Organization accounts also depend on organizational policy.

A custom skill folder contains a SKILL.md file and any referenced resources. Start the file with YAML metadata between two --- lines: name identifies the skill, and description tells Claude when the procedure is relevant. Write the task instructions below that metadata. Upload the ZIP containing that folder through the Skills add button → Create skill → Upload a skill, then enable it. For a short general preference, account instructions avoid this packaging step.

Give Claude the input together with the intended procedure: “Use my customer-email review skill on the draft below.” Claude Academy describes naming a skill directly or describing the task in natural language. If automatic selection misses the task, an explicit request helps establish which procedure you intended.

A skill does not grant access to a document merely by naming its service. If the review needs a product sheet, attach it or provide an authorized connection that can retrieve it. Skills describe the method; connected tools provide access. Missing evidence calls for the document or connection, rather than another paragraph telling Claude to be accurate.

Test the scope, not just the preferred tone

Use three short requests when refining the setup. First, provide a customer email with a documented deadline. Next, provide one with an unsupported deadline. Finally, ask an unrelated question outside the project. The first should retain the supported date, the second should identify the missing support, and the unrelated answer should not automatically turn into an email-review report.

If the review format appears everywhere, inspect the account instructions for the task-specific procedure and check whether the skill's description is too broad. Temporarily disabling the skill lets you compare the same request with it unavailable. If it never activates, check its enabled state and whether the description names the kind of request you actually made.

Keep the small input examples and the expected result when you revise the instructions. This gives you something concrete to compare after a wording change. A polished answer can still miss the central requirement, such as inventing a release date, so read the factual treatment as well as the tone.

Company settings can change what you can edit or create

On Team and Enterprise, organization instructions take precedence over conflicting individual instructions. Owners and Primary Owners control them, and changes may take up to an hour to propagate. If a company account keeps a required communication format, repeatedly adding the opposite preference to your account may not resolve it.

A missing creation or upload option can also reflect policy. The organization can disable User-created skills, and some Enterprise roles need a creation capability. Provisioned skills may remain available even when personal creation is restricted. Anthropic's organization skill guide explains those controls. Show the owner the missing option or a concrete conflicting response so they can identify whether the change belongs in your instructions or the organization's configuration.