---
title: "Create your skill at the end of the chat"
description: "Not every task deserves a skill. When it is worth the effort, and why the best moment to create one comes right after the work, not before."
language: en
source: https://coachsteff.live/en/skill-aan-het-einde-van-de-chat
---

# Create your skill at the end of the chat

Should I create a skill to choose a new washing machine? In one form or another, I get that question in almost every workshop, since everyone knows what skills are. My counter question is always the same: how many washing machines are you going to buy? One every ten years, if all goes well. You do not need to create a skill for that.

## The washing machine test

A skill is a fixed method that your AI can call upon: which steps, which quality criteria, which tone, which format. You write it once and after that your AI follows the same path every time. That is exactly its value, and also its limit.

A skill is worth the effort for something you do repeatedly, and in the same way every time. Drafting a quote, a meeting report, a newsletter in your own style. Something you do once, or completely differently every time, belongs in a regular chat. As soon as you capture a process that is not a fixed process, you get a skill that you constantly have to bypass.