Quick answer: for long-form articles, blogs and SEO content, start with Corey Haines’ free marketingskills (content-strategy, copy-editing), Composio’s content-research-writer for sourced research, claude-blog or seomachine for SEO drafts, blader/humanizer for AI tells, and Anthropic’s Marketing plugin for brand-voice review. This page is about articles and editorial workflow; for conversion copy (landing pages, headlines, ads) see Claude Code skills for copywriters.
Without skills, every session starts from zero: you paste the style guide again and explain the brief format again. Skills fix that. A skill is a folder of instructions Claude loads only when the task calls for it, so your research method, your brief template and your editing checklist come with you into every session.
This guide covers the skills worth installing for each stage of a writer’s week (research, briefs, long-form drafting, editing, humanizing, repurposing and content calendars), whether each is free or paid, and how to chain them into one pipeline. Every repo below was checked on GitHub on 1 November 2026, and star counts and last-push dates come from the GitHub API on that day.
What are Claude Code skills for content writers?
Short answer: Claude Code skills for content writers are SKILL.md folders that teach Claude a repeatable writing job, such as building a brief, drafting a long-form article, editing copy or stripping AI tells. You put them in ~/.claude/skills (all projects) or .claude/skills (one project), or install them as part of a plugin. Claude reads each skill’s short description and loads the full instructions only when your request matches.
If you are new to the concept, start with what Claude Code skills are and how they load.
What a skill folder looks like
A writing skill is usually plain Markdown with optional helpers:
~/.claude/skills/brief-builder/
├── SKILL.md # name, description, the instructions
├── references/ # style guide, brief template, examples
└── scripts/ # optional checks, e.g. a banned-word scannerThe description line in the frontmatter matters most. It is what Claude reads to decide whether to use the skill, so “Use when the user asks for a content brief, outline or SERP analysis” beats “Helps with content”.
Why skills suit writers better than saved prompts
| Saved prompt | Skill |
|---|---|
| You paste it every time | Claude loads it when the task matches |
| One block of text | Instructions plus reference files and scripts |
| Easy to drift between versions | One file, versioned in a folder or Git |
| Cannot run checks | Can call a script (word counter, tell detector) |
| Lives in your notes app | Lives next to your drafts |
The script column is the quiet win. A prompt can ask Claude to avoid stock AI phrases. A skill can run a scanner on the finished file and show you every line that slipped through.
Where they come from
Three places, broadly. Open-source GitHub repos (most of this list). Anthropic’s own plugins and example skills. And a small, uneven paid market on Gumroad, Contra and similar storefronts. Directories such as claudemarketplaces.com, skillsmp.com, claudskills.com and cultofclaude.com index the free ones, and they are useful for discovery. Treat them as search engines, not endorsements. Their counts disagree wildly (claudskills.com claims 153,000+ SKILL.md files; other directories quote very different numbers), and inclusion says nothing about quality.
Takeaway: a skill is a reusable process, and the description line decides when it fires.
How to install Claude Code skills (60-second version)
Short answer: most skill repos install with the open skills CLI, npx skills add owner/repo, plus --skill name to pick one skill. Plugins install from inside Claude Code with /plugin. Or you can clone or copy a folder into ~/.claude/skills/ by hand. Restart or start a new session and Claude picks it up.
The full walkthrough, including project versus personal scope, is in how to install Claude Code skills. Here are the three patterns you will see in this article:
- skills CLI (most repos):
npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills --skill content-strategy copy-editing - Plugin marketplace (Anthropic and some community repos):
claude plugin marketplace add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins claude plugin install marketing@knowledge-work-plugins - Manual clone:
git clone https://github.com/blader/humanizer.git ~/.claude/skills/humanizer
Install fewer skills than you think
A Reddit thread on skill design made a point worth repeating: load 20 skills and you are burning tokens on descriptions that never fire. Two or three skills per stage of your workflow is plenty. Pick by stage, which is how the rest of this guide is organised.
Read before you install
A skill is instructions plus, sometimes, scripts that run on your machine. Open SKILL.md and any scripts/ folder before you install from an unfamiliar source. This matters most for paid packs, where you cannot see the files before purchase.
The best Claude Code skills for content writers, by workflow stage
Short answer: for most writers, a strong free stack is Corey Haines’s marketingskills (content-strategy, copywriting, copy-editing), Composio’s content-research-writer, claude-blog or seomachine for SEO long-form, blader/humanizer for AI tells, and Anthropic’s Marketing plugin for brand-voice review. Paid packs exist, but none we found offers something the free set cannot cover.
Here is the field, verified on GitHub on 1 November 2026.
Master table: 12 skills and plugins worth knowing
| Skill / pack | Source | Free or paid | Stage | GitHub stars (1 Nov 2026) | Last push |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| marketingskills (content-strategy, copywriting, copy-editing, social, ai-seo) | coreyhaines31/marketingskills | Free, MIT | Calendar, drafting, editing, repurposing | 57,802 | 2026-10-31 |
| claude-skills marketing set (content-production, content-humanizer, content-creator, social-content) | alirezarezvani/claude-skills | Free, MIT | Drafting, humanizing, repurposing | 29,110 | 2026-10-31 |
| content-research-writer | ComposioHQ/awesome-claude-skills | Free (no license file listed) | Research, drafting | 78,500 (whole list) | 2026-09-18 |
| claude-blog | AgriciDaniel/claude-blog | Free, MIT | Briefs, long-form, SEO edits | 2,606 | 2026-10-30 |
| seomachine | TheCraigHewitt/seomachine | Free, MIT (needs your own Anthropic usage) | Research, long-form, publishing | 7,565 | 2026-10-23 |
| humanizer | blader/humanizer | Free, MIT | Humanizing | 63,274 | 2026-10-28 |
| Marketing plugin (draft-content, brand-review, content-creation, seo-audit) | anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins | Free, Apache-2.0 | Drafting, editing, brand voice | 34,324 | 2026-11-01 |
| doc-coauthoring, brand-guidelines | anthropics/skills | Free (example skills) | Drafting, style | 186,215 | 2026-10-28 |
| The Ultimate Claude SEO & AEO Skills Pack | Contra listing | Paid, listed at $39 (shown against $79) | SEO briefs, AEO | n/a | n/a |
| Master Marketing Claude Skills Bundle | Gumroad listing | Paid, $167 one-time | Email, SEO, ads, social | n/a | n/a |
| Ahrefs MCP server | Ahrefs | Paid (needs an Ahrefs plan; pricing set by Ahrefs) | Research data | n/a | n/a |
| Notion / WordPress MCP | Notion and WordPress official servers | Free connector; your plan applies | Calendar, publishing | n/a | n/a |
Note the Composio star count covers the whole awesome list, not one skill. Paid prices were read from the live listing pages on 1 November 2026 and can change at any time.
How to read the stars
Stars measure attention, not fit. The humanizer repo has more stars than most marketing collections because it solves one painful problem cleanly. A 2,600-star repo that matches your exact workflow beats a 78,000-star list you will never browse. The “last push” column is the more useful signal: every repo above was updated within the last ten weeks.
Research and brief skills
Short answer: for research, use Composio’s content-research-writer when you want sourced notes and citations, seomachine when you want a full SEO research workspace, and claude-blog when you want a brief tied to rankings and AI citations. Pair any of them with a data MCP (Ahrefs, Semrush) if you pay for one.
content-research-writer (free)
Composio’s awesome list describes it as a skill that “assists in writing high-quality content by conducting research, adding citations, improving hooks, and providing section-by-section feedback”. It works as a writing partner more than a pipeline: outline with you, research, cite, then review each section.
Install:
npx skills add https://github.com/composiohq/awesome-claude-skills --skill content-research-writerHonest caveat: an independent review on tessl.io scored it low for being generic, with a note that no evaluation scenarios had been run. That fits what the SKILL.md suggests. It is a good default, and you will want to add your own brief template to it.
seomachine (free, MIT)
Craig Hewitt’s seomachine is a whole Claude Code workspace rather than a single skill. It ships slash commands and sub-agents for research, writing, analysis, optimisation and WordPress publishing. Clone it and work inside the folder:
git clone https://github.com/TheCraigHewitt/seomachine.git
cd seomachine && claudeReviewers note it is weaker on GEO and AI-search work and on technical audits. If your brief process is mostly keyword-led, that is fine. For keyword-specific tooling, see Claude Code skills for keyword research.
claude-blog (free, MIT)
AgriciDaniel’s claude-blog routes a main blog skill to a set of sub-skills: briefs, writing, rewriting, audits, schema and more, aimed at both Google rankings and AI citations. It installs as a plugin:
/plugin marketplace add AgriciDaniel/claude-blog
/plugin install claude-blog@AgriciDaniel-claude-blogThe repo also documents a script install. Its quality scoring needs Python 3.11 or later.
What a good brief skill should produce
Whatever you install, check that the brief it writes contains these, and edit the skill until it does:
- Primary keyword and search intent in one line
- The format the top results reward (list, guide, comparison)
- What the top pages miss
- Real questions from People Also Ask and forums, quoted, not paraphrased
- Sources to cite, with URLs
- Word budget per H2
- The one objection the reader arrives with
Long-form drafting skills
Short answer: for long-form, marketingskills/copywriting is strongest on persuasive structure, Anthropic’s Marketing plugin draft-content is strongest on brand voice, alirezarezvani’s content-production targets articles and guides at volume, and claude-blog or seomachine handle SEO-shaped posts end to end.
Anthropic Marketing plugin: draft-content and content-creation (free)
Anthropic’s knowledge-work-plugins repo includes a Marketing plugin with eight skills on 1 November 2026: brand-review, campaign-plan, competitive-brief, content-creation, draft-content, email-sequence, performance-report and seo-audit. draft-content writes for a stated content type, audience and brand voice. If you have not configured a voice, it asks for guidelines, then falls back to a neutral professional tone. For web content it adds SEO notes.
claude plugin marketplace add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
claude plugin install marketing@knowledge-work-pluginsmarketingskills: copywriting (free, MIT)
Corey Haines’s repo is the most-starred marketing-specific collection here, with 53 skill folders. copywriting is built for page copy (homepages, landing and pricing pages), so it shines on intros, CTAs and conversion sections of a blog post more than on 3,000-word explainers.
npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills --skill copywritingCopywriters will get more from the dedicated roundup: Claude Code skills for copywriters.
alirezarezvani/claude-skills: content-production (free, MIT)
This large cross-platform library has a marketing-skill folder with 49 skills, including content-production, content-creator, content-strategy, copy-editing and aeo. content-production is pitched at blog posts, long-form articles and guides at scale.
npx skills add alirezarezvani/claude-skills --skill content-productionAnthropic doc-coauthoring (free)
The official anthropics/skills repo is mostly document and design skills, but doc-coauthoring is a useful drafting partner for long reports, and brand-guidelines shows how to package a style guide as a skill. Use them as models when you write your own.
Editing and humanizing skills
Short answer: use marketingskills/copy-editing or alirezarezvani’s copy-editing for structured line edits, Anthropic’s brand-review to check a draft against your voice and messaging, and blader/humanizer to remove AI-writing patterns. Run the humanizer last, then read the piece yourself.
blader/humanizer (free, MIT)
With 63,274 stars, this is the most popular single writing skill on GitHub that we found. It checks text against a list of patterns drawn from Wikipedia’s “Signs of AI writing” guide: inflated symbolism, promotional language, “-ing” analysis tails, vague attributions, em dash overuse, rule-of-three lists and AI vocabulary. Its voice calibration reads your own writing samples to match rhythm and word choice.
git clone https://github.com/blader/humanizer.git ~/.claude/skills/humanizerThen call /humanizer with your text, or ask Claude to humanize a file.
alirezarezvani content-humanizer (free, MIT)
A second option inside the claude-skills library. Worth trying if you already installed that repo for drafting, so you do not add another source.
Anthropic brand-review (free)
brand-review checks content against your brand voice, style guide and messaging pillars. It is the closest thing in this list to a second editor who knows the house rules. It is only as good as the guide you give it, so write that guide down first.
A two-pass edit that works
| Pass | Skill | What it catches |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Structure | copy-editing | Buried answers, weak headers, long paragraphs, missing proof |
| 2. Voice | brand-review | Off-brand terms, tone drift, banned claims |
| 3. Tells | humanizer | Em dashes, stock AI words, negative parallelism, rule of three |
| 4. You | none | Facts, quotes, links, whether it is any good |
A humanizer can make prose sound less machine-made. It cannot make a claim true. Check every number before you hit publish.
Repurposing and content calendar skills
Short answer: for calendars, marketingskills/content-strategy plans topics, clusters, editorial calendars and distribution. For repurposing, marketingskills/social and alirezarezvani’s social-content turn a long post into social formats. A Notion MCP server lets Claude write the calendar into the database your team already uses.
content-strategy (free, MIT)
Corey Haines’s content-strategy covers content planning, editorial calendars, topic clusters and distribution. Feed it your sitemap and your keyword list and ask for a 90-day calendar with one pillar and its cluster posts.
npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills --skill content-strategySEO-led planners should also read Claude Code skills for SEO.
social and social-content (free, MIT)
Both turn a finished article into posts for LinkedIn, X and similar channels. The useful habit is to repurpose from the edited final, not the draft, so corrections flow downstream.
Calendar and publishing connectors
These are MCP servers rather than skills, but they close the loop:
- Notion: official MCP server, hosted or via npm. Claude can create and update calendar rows.
- WordPress: an official MCP Adapter plugin exists for self-hosted sites, and WordPress.com runs its own MCP server.
- Ahrefs and Semrush: both publish official remote MCP servers. Ahrefs requires a paid Ahrefs plan.
Wider marketing stacks are covered in Claude Code skills for marketers.
Free vs paid Claude Code skills: which should writers buy?
Short answer: start free. The open-source repos above cover every stage of the writing workflow, carry permissive licenses and are updated weekly. Paid packs make sense only if one does a specific job you would otherwise spend hours building, and you can see what is inside before buying.
Free vs paid comparison
| Factor | Free (GitHub, Anthropic plugins) | Paid (Gumroad, Contra, Payhip packs) |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 (you still pay for Claude usage) | Listings we checked ranged from $39 to $167; others go far higher or far lower |
| Can you read it first? | Yes, every file | Usually not until purchase |
| Update signal | Public commit history | Seller’s word (“lifetime updates”) |
| License | MIT or Apache-2.0 for most picks here | Varies; often personal use only |
| Quality signal | Stars, issues, forks, reviews like tessl.io | Sales page copy |
| Support | GitHub issues | Seller email, if any |
| Best for | Almost everyone | Niche packs with a clear spec, such as one platform or genre |
What the paid market looks like
On 1 November 2026, the Contra “Ultimate Claude SEO & AEO Skills Pack” listed at $39, shown against $79, with 12 skill files, two Webflow bonus skills and a setup guide. A Gumroad “Master Marketing Claude Skills Bundle” listed at $167 one-time. Other listings sell bundles of hundreds or thousands of skills for a few dollars, some with “only 20 slots left” pricing. A digital file has no slots. Skip those.
Red flags in paid packs
- Huge skill counts with no file list
- Countdown or “limited slots” pricing on a downloadable file
- No sample SKILL.md
- Scripts you cannot inspect before running
If you would rather build than buy, how to build a Claude Code skill walks through one from scratch. Your own brief skill, written around your real process, will often beat a purchased one.
The brief → draft → edit → publish pipeline
Short answer: chain one skill per stage in a single project folder: research and brief (claude-blog or content-research-writer), draft (draft-content or content-production), edit (copy-editing, then brand-review), humanize (humanizer plus a script check), then publish (WordPress or Notion MCP) and repurpose (social). Each stage writes a file the next stage reads.
Set up the folder
my-blog/
├── .claude/skills/ # project skills, shared with your team via Git
├── CLAUDE.md # voice, audience, banned words, link rules
├── briefs/
├── drafts/
├── final/
└── social/Put your voice rules in CLAUDE.md once. Every skill then inherits them.
Run the pipeline
| Step | Ask Claude | Skill | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Research | ”Research [keyword]: top 10 results, PAA, Reddit questions, gaps” | content-research-writer / seomachine | briefs/keyword-research.md |
| 2. Brief | ”Turn that into a brief with H2 budget and sources” | claude-blog / your own brief skill | briefs/keyword.md |
| 3. Draft | ”Draft from the brief, answer first under every H2” | draft-content / content-production | drafts/keyword.md |
| 4. Edit | ”Copy-edit, then brand-review” | copy-editing, brand-review | edited draft |
| 5. Humanize | ”Humanize and run the tell detector” | humanizer | final/keyword.md |
| 6. Human check | You verify facts, links, quotes | none | sign-off |
| 7. Publish | ”Create a WordPress draft from final/keyword.md” | WordPress MCP | CMS draft |
| 8. Repurpose | ”Five LinkedIn posts and a thread from the final” | social / social-content | social/keyword.md |
Keep a human gate before publish
Step 6 is not optional. Skills make drafts faster. They also repeat confident mistakes faster. Publish to a CMS draft, never straight to live, and keep write actions behind a confirmation. Writers coming from outside engineering will find the setup gentler than it looks: Claude Code skills for non-developers.
Common mistakes writers make with skills
Short answer: the usual failures are installing too many skills, vague descriptions that never trigger, no style guide for brand-voice skills to check against, trusting the humanizer to fix facts, and skipping the human edit.
- Twenty skills, no workflow. Install by stage. Remove what you have not used in a month.
- Vague descriptions. If a skill never fires, rewrite its
descriptionwith the exact phrases you type. - No written voice. Brand-review cannot check a voice that lives in your head.
- One giant skill. Split research, drafting and editing so you can swap one without breaking the rest.
- Publishing live through MCP. Publish to draft.
- Treating stars as quality. Read the SKILL.md. It takes five minutes.
- Ignoring audits. After publishing, run an audit pass; see Claude Code skills for SEO audits.
FAQ
What are Claude Code skills?
Folders containing a SKILL.md file with instructions, and optional scripts and references, that Claude loads when a task matches the skill’s description.
Can Claude Code be used for writing, or is it only for coding?
It works well for writing. It reads and writes files in a folder, so briefs, drafts and finals live side by side, and skills hold your process.
Where do I put Claude Code skills?
~/.claude/skills/ for all your projects, or .claude/skills/ inside one project folder. Plugins install their own.
How do I install a skill from GitHub?
Usually npx skills add owner/repo --skill name, or clone the folder into your skills directory. Some repos install as plugins with /plugin install.
What is the best Claude skill for writing blog posts?
For SEO blog posts, claude-blog or seomachine. For general long-form, Anthropic’s draft-content or alirezarezvani’s content-production. Fit matters more than popularity.
Is there a Claude skill that removes AI writing patterns?
Yes. blader/humanizer is the most popular, and alirezarezvani’s library includes content-humanizer.
Do humanizer skills beat AI detectors?
None of the repos we checked claims that, and you should not rely on it. They remove recognisable patterns. Your own edit is what makes writing sound like you.
Are Claude Code skills free?
Most good ones are free and open source under MIT or Apache-2.0. You still pay for Claude usage through your plan or API.
Are paid Claude skill packs worth it?
Rarely, for writers. The free repos cover every stage. Buy only when you can see the contents and the pack does a specific job you need.
How many skills should I install?
Two or three per workflow stage. Each installed skill adds a description Claude reads, and unused ones are noise.
Can Claude write my own skill for me?
Yes, and many Reddit users report doing this. Others in the same threads are sceptical about self-written skills, so test any skill on real briefs before trusting it. Anthropic’s skill-creator skill helps.
Do Claude skills work in Claude.ai as well as Claude Code?
Skills are supported across Claude apps, Claude Code and the API, though install steps differ by surface.
Can Claude Code publish to WordPress?
Yes, through an MCP server such as the official WordPress MCP Adapter. Publish to draft and review first.
What is the difference between a skill, a plugin and an MCP server?
A skill is instructions. A plugin bundles skills, commands and sometimes MCP servers for one-step install. An MCP server connects Claude to an outside tool or data source.
Are third-party skills safe?
Usually, but read SKILL.md and any scripts first. A skill can run commands on your machine.
Will skills keep my brand voice consistent?
They help if you write the voice down in a style guide or CLAUDE.md. Anthropic’s brand-review checks drafts against it.
Sources and methodology
Star counts, last-push dates, licenses and skill folder names were pulled from the GitHub REST API on 1 November 2026 for: coreyhaines31/marketingskills, alirezarezvani/claude-skills, ComposioHQ/awesome-claude-skills, TheCraigHewitt/seomachine, AgriciDaniel/claude-blog, blader/humanizer, anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins and anthropics/skills. Paid prices were read from the live Contra and Gumroad listing pages on the same day. Install commands come from each repo’s README or the skills.sh listing. Reddit observations come from public threads on skill design and writing. We have not run controlled tests comparing these skills; the guidance here is based on their documentation and structure.
Your next step
Pick one stage that eats most of your week. Install one free skill for it, run it on a real brief, and edit the SKILL.md until the output matches how you work. Then add the next stage. In a month you will have a pipeline built around your own process.
