I help sustainability professionals build AI tools that save a week out of every month.
Hey {{first_name|there}},
You know that thing you do every Monday morning.
Check the EU Commission. Open a few newsletters. Scroll LinkedIn. Try to piece together what actually matters this week before the day takes over.
It eats two or three hours. It's arguably not even your job. But skip it and you fall behind.
I did this every week for years. Then I stopped. Not because I stopped caring, but because I built a Claude skill that does it for me. One prompt on Monday morning, and I get a full brief, sorted by priority, built around exactly what I work on.
Over the last few weeks we covered the Cowork setup: the folder, CLAUDE.md, connectors. Skills are the piece that turns that setup into work that runs itself, so this email and the next three are all about skills.
And skills are only the start. Next Monday AI Lab Cohort 3 kicks off, and that's where a written method goes one step further and becomes a full tool. Cohort 2 built tools for PPWR, for ESRS and CSRD, and for life cycle design. Your idea could be next.
A real Monday brief, 100% produced by the skill.
What is a Claude skill?
A skill is a set of written instructions that tells Claude how to perform one specific task. Not "help me with ESG research". A precise instruction set that covers:
What the task is
Where to look
How to filter and prioritise
What the output should look like
You write it once. Claude follows it every time you trigger it, the same way, to the same standard.
Think of it as a work instruction for a very capable colleague. Except this colleague never forgets a step and never does it differently on a Friday afternoon.
A skill doesn't replace your judgment. It packages it. None of the generic skills out there know what an ESRS data gap looks like or why CBAM pricing matters this week. You do. That's what makes your skill worth more than anyone else's.
How to build one in 5 steps
Pick the right workflow. Repeatable, time-consuming, with your professional logic in it. Test: can you describe how you do it in numbered steps? Then it's skill-able.
Write down your method first. Before you open Claude: what's the task, where do you look, how do you filter, what does the output look like?
Build it with Skill Creator. It's free and already in your Claude account. Tell it you want a new skill, paste your notes from step 2, and answer its questions.
Test before you trust it. Trigger it three different ways: does it fire every time? Give it an unrelated task: does it stay quiet? Read the output: does it match how you'd do it?
Install and run. Add it under Customize, then Skills, and call it with a forward slash whenever you need it.
Start with mine
The easiest way to learn skills is to run one that already works. The Monday Intel Brief is free, fully annotated, and takes about five minutes to adapt to your industry and topics. Over 1,000 sustainability professionals already use it.
Run it next Monday. See what you do with the two hours you get back.
On Thursday: why this one skill spread the way it did, and what that tells you about the first skill you should build.
FREE VALUE
How to use Claude skills as a sustainability manager
By the way, I made this video back in June, and it's still one of the most useful things I've recorded. It shows the Monday brief skill running end to end, then walks you through making it yours: your industry, your topics, your sources. Make sure to check it out before you install the skill.
Hit reply and tell me which task you'd turn into a skill first. I read every one.
— Zyad
Want your own skills built with you?
In SustainOS Cowork we turn your recurring sustainability tasks into skills that run, for you or your whole team.
