Your Contractor AI Prompts · Companion Guide

Make It Yours

Shape your plugin’s skills to fit the way you work — no code, just plain English.

~15 minutes to read No coding — you just talk to Claude The AI Career Lab

The Contractor AI Prompts plugin is full of skills built for contractors. This short guide shows you how to bend those skills to your practice — change how one sounds, spin off a variant, add a brand-new one, even teach it the rules you can’t afford to get wrong. You do all of it the same way: open the plugin in Cowork and tell Claude what you want, in plain English. If you can write an email, you can do all of it.

1What a skill actually is

Each skill in your plugin is a small folder with one plain-English file inside, called SKILL.md. Its name matches the command you type. Here’s the whole secret, laid out:

---
name: change-order
description: When the contractor needs to [do the task].
---

When this runs:
1. Ask me for [the input you need].
2. Draft the [output] in a [warm / formal / concise] tone.
3. Flag anything that needs [the professional’s] review before sending.

That’s it. The skill is a recipe: when this comes up, do these steps, in this voice. The part between the --- lines just tells Claude the skill’s name and when to use it; everything below is plain instructions. The rest of this guide is simply asking Claude to rewrite recipes like that one.

2The 60-second edit

The fastest possible win: change how one skill sounds. Say a draft comes out a touch too formal for how you talk to clients. You don’t hunt for a file — you tell Claude, and it makes the edit for you.

1. Open your plugin in Customize. In Cowork: Customize → Plugins, pick your plugin, click Customize, then Let’s go.
2. Say what you want, in plain English. For example: “Make the /change-order skill sound warmer and a little shorter.”
3. Read what changed. Claude rewrites the skill and shows a summary — skim it to confirm it’s what you meant.
4. Click Save plugin. Next time you run /change-order, it uses the new voice. A real edit, in under a minute, with no files touched.

3Duplicate & tweak — make a variant

Often you don’t want to replace a skill — you want a second version for a specific situation. Maybe one client type needs a different approach. Just ask Claude to copy it and adjust the copy.

1. Open Customize and ask for the copy: “Make a copy of /change-order called /change-order-for-kitchen-remodels, and leave the original exactly as it is.”
2. Describe the change for the new situation — “In the copy, use a [different] tone and add a step for kitchen-remodels.”
3. Read the summary, then click Save plugin.
4. Use either one. You now have two commands — /change-order and /change-order-for-kitchen-remodels — side by side.

This is the safest way to experiment. The original keeps working exactly as it did, so you can’t break what you rely on. If the variant turns out better, great — if not, open Customize and tell Claude to delete it. Nothing’s lost.

4Write a brand-new skill

Have a task you do every week that isn’t covered? Add a skill for it — and the easiest way is to let Claude write it with you. You describe the job; it writes the SKILL.md.

1. Open Customize and say what you want: “Add a new skill called /my-[task] that [does the task]. Ask me whatever you need first.”
2. Answer Claude’s questions — what you’ll hand it, the steps, the tone, and anything it must never do.
3. Read the skill it writes, then click Save plugin. Your new command is ready to run.

Not sure what to tell it? This is the shape of a good skill — paste it into the chat as a starting point, or just describe each part out loud:

---
name: my-[task]
description: [Describe the moment this is useful, in one sentence.]
---

What I’ll give you:
- [The information or file you’ll hand over]

What to do:
1. [First step, in plain English]
2. [Second step]
3. [Draft the result in a ___ tone]

Before you finish:
- Flag anything that needs my review.
- Never [the one thing it must never do].

5Teach it your rules — writing a guard

One of the highest-value customizations for contractors — and almost nobody does it. A guard is a short rule-block that reminds Claude of a line it must not cross: the disclosure you always include, the claim you never make, the step you can’t skip.

Your plugin already ships with guards built for contractors. But your jurisdiction, your firm, or your licence may have a rule that’s specific to you. Adding one is a sentence — in Customize, say: “Add a guard that always [does X] and never [does Y] when drafting [the document]. If it’s ever unsure about [the edge case], stop and ask me.” Here’s the shape Claude will write:

---
name: my-guard
description: [The rule, named plainly] — for use when drafting [the kind of document].
---

Use this as a final check when drafting [the kind of document].

The rule:
- Always [the thing you must do — e.g. include this disclosure].
- Never [the thing you must not do — e.g. promise a specific outcome].
- If unsure whether [edge case], stop and ask me first.

Why it matters: [One line — so future-you remembers the reason.]

6Cowork, Code, connectors, or the app?

One question trips up almost everyone: “Which Claude thing do I actually need for what I’m trying to do?” Here’s the decision in one picture.

And the same thing as a quick-reference table, for when you just want to scan:

7Keep it yours — saving & not breaking things

A few habits keep your customizations safe and tidy:

1. Read the summary before you Save. Every Customize session shows what changed — skim it so you always know what you agreed to.
2. Change one thing at a time. Make a change, Save, run the skill. If something’s off, you’ll know exactly what caused it.
3. Keep the originals. To experiment on a built-in skill, ask Claude to make a copy first (Section 3) — then “factory settings” are one sentence away.
4. Name your own skills clearly. Ask Claude to prefix the ones you create with my-, so it’s obvious which are yours. (If your firm’s admin provided the plugin, jot down your changes — an admin update can overwrite local edits.)

8When you’re ready to go further

You now know everything you need to shape these prompts around your own practice — adjust a tone, spin off a variant, add a new skill, and set a guard for the rules you live by. That’s enough to make these genuinely yours. The best customizations start exactly here, with small changes like these.