Make It Yours
Shape your plugin’s skills to fit the way you work — no code, just plain English.
The Photographer AI Prompts plugin is full of skills built for photographers. 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.
A skill isn’t software you write. It’s a set of instructions in plain English, kept in a file called SKILL.md. When you run /gallery-delivery, Claude reads those instructions and uses them to guide the task. So changing a skill isn’t coding — you open your plugin in Cowork’s Customize, tell Claude what to change, and it rewrites the instructions for you. You can read exactly what changed before you keep 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: gallery-delivery
description: When the photographer 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.
In Cowork, open Customize → Plugins → your plugin and click through any skill to read its SKILL.md top to bottom. Don’t change anything yet. Notice that you understand every line. That feeling — “oh, it’s just instructions” — is the whole game.
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.
- Open your plugin in Customize. In Cowork:
Customize → Plugins, pick your plugin, click Customize, then Let’s go. - Say what you want, in plain English. For example: “Make the
/gallery-deliveryskill sound warmer and a little shorter.” - Read what changed. Claude rewrites the skill and shows a summary — skim it to confirm it’s what you meant.
- Click Save plugin. Next time you run
/gallery-delivery, it uses the new voice. A real edit, in under a minute, with no files touched.
You don’t always need a Customize session. Run a skill, and the second you spot something off, say in the same chat: “Redo that, but warmer and shorter.” That fixes this one. When you want it to stick, add: “…and add that to the plugin so it’s right next time.” Claude writes the change back to the skill.
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.
- Open Customize and ask for the copy: “Make a copy of
/gallery-deliverycalled/gallery-delivery-for-weddings, and leave the original exactly as it is.” - Describe the change for the new situation — “In the copy, use a [different] tone and add a step for weddings.”
- Read the summary, then click Save plugin.
- Use either one. You now have two commands —
/gallery-deliveryand/gallery-delivery-for-weddings— 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.
- Open Customize and say what you want: “Add a new skill called
/my-[task]that [does the task]. Ask me whatever you need first.” - Answer Claude’s questions — what you’ll hand it, the steps, the tone, and anything it must never do.
- 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 photographers — 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 photographers. 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.]Guards can cut down repeated mistakes — but you’re still the licensed professional, and Claude works by judgment, not hard rules. For a rule that must hold every time, ask Claude to build it into the skills it applies to, and always read the output before it goes out. The guard makes the right thing the default; it doesn’t remove you from the loop.
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:
| You want to… | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Run a repeating task in your field | Cowork skill | That’s exactly what your plugin is. Type /gallery-delivery. |
| Pull live info from Gmail, Drive, Slack, etc. | Connector | Link an approved app once; your skills can then use the actions it allows — search, read, and (where you permit) update. |
| Ask a quick one-off question | Claude app | No setup needed. A normal chat is the right tool. |
| Build or edit actual software / a website | Claude Code | Powerful, but rarely what most photographers need day to day. |
A connector gives Claude access to whatever you connect it to. Only connect tools you trust, read the permissions it asks for, and be careful with anything that can send, create, or change records — especially where client confidentiality is on the line.
7Keep it yours — saving & not breaking things
A few habits keep your customizations safe and tidy:
- Read the summary before you Save. Every Customize session shows what changed — skim it so you always know what you agreed to.
- Change one thing at a time. Make a change, Save, run the skill. If something’s off, you’ll know exactly what caused it.
- 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.
- 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.)
Skills are plain text, so you can’t damage anything permanently. If one stops appearing or starts misbehaving, it’s almost always a small thing — a duplicate name, a skill saved outside its own folder, or broken details between the --- lines. The fix is the same as everything else: open Customize and tell Claude, “the /gallery-delivery skill isn’t showing up — can you check it?”
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.