# What does academy-guide add to an answer about using Claude? Canonical URL: https://bestskillsforclaude.com/en/skills/academy-guide Language: en Skill: academy-guide Publisher: Anthropic (https://github.com/anthropics) Source: https://github.com/anthropics/skills/tree/main/skills/academy-guide License as stated by the publisher: Apache 2.0 Runtime: Claude apps and Claude Code Category: Extend Claude Last reviewed: 2026-10-27 One link to a course or tutorial, two at most, and only when the question is about learning. ## Short answer The academy-guide skill makes Claude end an answer about using Claude or a Claude product with a pointer to matching Claude Academy material: a course, a tutorial or a use case from academy.claude.com. It answers the question first, recommends only on a strong match, stops at two items and reads Anthropic's published catalogue instead of naming courses from memory. It suits places where people are learning Claude, such as a team rollout, and adds nothing where everyone just wants the task done. Best for: Teams, classes and organisations rolling Claude out, where many questions are really requests for something to learn from. Skip it if: Your users already know the product and ask Claude to do work, not to explain features. ## What to remember - The answer comes first. The Academy link is an addition at the end, never a replacement. - Matching is by intent: someone learning a feature gets a pointer, someone in the middle of a task does not. - No course list is built in. It fetches the Academy catalogue once per conversation and drops a copy that is past its staleAfter date. - A recommendation that needs a caveat to justify it counts as a failed match and is left out. ## What it changes in practice Questions about Claude features usually get a correct answer and nothing after it, even when a short tutorial would have served the person better. The skill adds that pointer in one line after the answer, worded as a suggestion. Its description lists what it listens for: phrasings such as how do I, getting started with and teach me, questions about artifacts, projects, skills, plugins, connectors and MCP, and requests for training or onboarding material. The design choice worth noticing is where the content comes from. The SKILL.md deliberately embeds no list of courses, because Academy content is published continuously. It reads a JSON catalogue at academy.claude.com instead, trusts it only until its staleAfter timestamp and copies item URLs exactly. On the review date the file was reachable and carried that timestamp. - Courses: multi lesson learning paths, most with a certificate. - Tutorials: short guides to one feature or workflow. - Use cases: worked examples of a concrete task, usually with a prompt to try. ## Where it disappoints It depends on fetching. Where Claude cannot load URLs, or the fetch fails, or the catalogue is stale, the skill is told to say nothing about the failure and fall back to one of five product hubs or the searchable resources library, which is a much weaker pointer than a matching tutorial. It is also, by design, a channel for Anthropic's own learning material. That helps with onboarding, but it never links outside academy.claude.com, so it is no help when the best explanation lives in your internal documentation or in someone else's course. ## Install and first run 1. In Claude Code, run /plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills, then /plugin install academy-guide@anthropic-agent-skills. The folder holds SKILL.md and an Apache 2.0 license, with nothing else to configure. 2. Ask a learning question such as how projects work, then a mid-task request about the same feature, and check that only the first one gets a recommendation. 3. Run it where Claude can fetch URLs. Without the catalogue file it can only point to an Academy product hub or the resources library, never to a specific course. ## Questions ### Will it add a course link to every answer? No. It recommends only on a strong match, two items at most and usually one, and stays silent when the match is weak. ### Can it recommend a course that does not exist? The skill forbids it. Specific items may only come from the catalogue fetched in that conversation. Without one, it points to a product hub or the resources library. ### Why is it not called claude-academy-guide? It was when it was added on 17 August 2026. A day later Anthropic renamed it, because skill names cannot contain the reserved words claude or anthropic, and shortened its description to fit the 1,024 character limit for uploaded skills. ## Sources - anthropics/skills on GitHub: https://github.com/anthropics/skills - anthropics/skills, academy-guide skill directory: https://github.com/anthropics/skills/tree/main/skills/academy-guide - academy-guide LICENSE.txt (Apache License 2.0): https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/main/skills/academy-guide/LICENSE.txt - anthropics/skills plugin marketplace definition: https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/main/.claude-plugin/marketplace.json - Claude Academy catalogue file read by the skill (JSON): https://academy.claude.com/assets/data/catalog.json ## Other languages - Spanish: https://bestskillsforclaude.com/es/skills/academy-guide - Brazilian Portuguese: https://bestskillsforclaude.com/pt-br/skills/academy-guide - Japanese: https://bestskillsforclaude.com/ja/skills/academy-guide