Project or Skill? The Two Words That Stop You Repeating Yourself

A Project and a Skill sound like two names for the same thing, because both are somewhere to save instructions for the AI. But they do different jobs. A Project is a place, while a Skill is a method, a set of steps.

Each one fixes a different kind of repeating yourself. The first kind is your situation, which might be the business, the job hunt or the kids' school, typed out again in every new chat.

The second kind is a job you do the same way each time, such as reviewing a cover letter or checking a contract, explained again and again. Claude and ChatGPT both have a fix for each problem, under the same two names.

A house with rooms

Picture your life with AI as a house. A Project is one room in that house, for one part of your life.

On the wall is a short note that says what goes on in this room and how you like things done. On the table are the few documents you keep reaching for, and the room remembers what happened in it last time.

Put plainly, a Project holds three things. It holds standing instructions and files the AI can always read, and it holds a memory of the chats inside that Project.

Walk into the room, and the AI already knows the price list, the tenancy and the tone you use with clients. Walk out, and none of that follows you.

People tend to end up with rooms for work, home admin, the job hunt, the thing they're learning and their own writing voice. Make one room per part of your life, because a room called "Stuff" is just a cupboard.

A room only knows what you've put in it. So if an old price list sits on the table, the AI will quote it with total confidence.

Both tools call this a Project, and both offer Projects on their free plans, with limits on how many files you can add. ChatGPT also lets a team share one Project. I've written a whole page on setting one up.

Recipe cards you carry from room to room

A Skill is a recipe card. Whichever room you're standing in, the card says the same thing. When I ask for this, do these steps, in this order, like this.

Your cover-letter review might be one Skill, or the "explain it back to me and mark me strictly" quiz.

In practice, a Skill is saved instructions for one job, and the AI loads those instructions whenever that job comes up. You give the Skill a name, say when it applies, and write the steps.

From then on, "review this cover letter" means your five steps, not the AI's guess at what reviewing means today. Expect the AI to mostly follow the card and sometimes go its own way, so read the results carefully the first few times.

The cards worth writing are for jobs you do more than once a fortnight and want done your way. Your writing voice, your devil's advocate and your way of reading a contract are all good choices. Each one takes a few hundred words, written once.

Both tools now call this a Skill. On ChatGPT, Skills come with every plan, though they are still marked "beta" on personal accounts, which means the feature is still being tested. On Claude, a Skill is a folder of instructions you can share.

A Skill is also the clearest line between someone who uses AI well and the people who sell templates. You write one recipe for your own kitchen, instead of downloading a hundred recipes written for someone else's.

Which one you need

Ask yourself one question, which is whether this is about where I am, or what I'm doing.

It's about…	Make a…	Because…
My business, my flat, my job hunt, this course	Project	It's a place with its own files and history
How I write, how I review, how I check, how I quiz myself	Skill	It's a method you'll want in every place
Both, my business and how I write for it	Project, with a Skill used inside it	The room holds the facts, and the recipe holds the method

Say you run a small bakery. The Project is "The bakery", and it holds the price list, the allergen sheet and the supplier emails. On the wall is a note saying "we're friendly and we never discount".

Then there's the Skill, "Reply to a customer", which holds your four steps for answering a message. You can use it from your personal account too, when a mate asks you for a cake.

If you can't decide, make a Project, because a room with good instructions does eighty per cent of what a Skill does. Later, once you've seen yourself use the same method three times, you can copy that method onto a card.

The rest of the house

Four other features get mixed up with these two.

Preferences (called custom instructions in ChatGPT) are the house rules by the front door, one note that applies to every chat in every room. For example, "Short answers, British spelling, don't flatter me." Keep the note to ten lines.

Memory is a diary the house keeps about you across all your chats, and the AI writes it, not you. Memory is useful and worth reading and editing, but nothing in it is an instruction you gave.

Scheduled tasks are jobs that run on a timer, on the AI company's computers, while your laptop is shut. A scheduled task is often just a recipe card on a timer. Letting AI work while you're away covers scheduled tasks.

Agents (called workspace agents in ChatGPT, which replaced custom GPTs) are a bigger step. An agent is an assistant that runs on the AI company's computers, with its own memory, its own schedule and links to other apps you use. An agent is often shared with a team.

Think of an agent as a housekeeper you've hired. I'd only bring one in when you have a whole routine of work to hand over, and only after you've tried the room and the card.

This year the names are settled, but the menus aren't. Button positions, file limits and "beta" labels all move around, so check your tool's own help page for today's answer.

Nothing goes on the note or the card unless you put it there.

A note on the wall, in your own handwriting.