Claude's Record-a-Skill cut my research from hours to 30 minutes - but the magic has limits

David Gewirtz/ZDNET

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ZDNET's key takeaways

Claude turns narrated screen recordings into reusable skills.

My skill cut hours of tedious research to just 30 minutes.

The tradeoffs: high usage, slow runs, and fragile control.

Last month, Anthropic announced a new Claude Cowork feature: the ability to narrate a screen recording and turn it into a Claude skill. I tried it and, well, as they say, "All magic comes with a price."

Let's set the stage by defining what we're after here. A skill is a very detailed canned prompt that can be run like a program from within Claude (and many other AIs).

Also: This new Claude skill saves you from bad contracts - and costs less than a lawyer

The best example is this skill from the Claude Small Business plugin that comprehensively reads and evaluates contracts. It doesn't perform as well as the best contract lawyers out there, but it's actually quite a bit more helpful and comprehensive than some of the mediocre attorneys I've worked with over the years.

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