Built-in Skills Deep Dive

Let’s go deeper on the skills that come bundled with Claude Code and how to get the most out of them.

/commit — Smart Git Commits

The /commit skill is probably the one you’ll use most. Here’s what it does behind the scenes:

The Workflow

1. Runs git status to see all changes
2. Runs git diff to understand what changed
3. Reads recent git log to match your commit message style
4. Analyzes the changes to categorize them (feature, fix, refactor, etc.)
5. Drafts a concise commit message
6. Stages relevant files and creates the commit

Tips

• Stage files yourself first if you only want to commit specific changes
• Let Claude see the full diff — it writes better messages with more context
• Claude will warn you about sensitive files (.env, credentials) and skip them

Example

> /commit

Claude: Looking at the changes...

  Modified: src/api/auth.ts (added rate limiting)
  Modified: src/middleware/rateLimit.ts (new file)
  Modified: package.json (added rate-limiter-flexible)

  Commit message: "Add rate limiting to auth endpoints

  - Implement token bucket rate limiting on login/register
  - Add rate-limiter-flexible package
  - Configure 10 requests per minute per IP"

  Proceed? [y/n]

/review-pr — Pull Request Reviews

Reviews a PR for issues before merge.

> /review-pr 42

Claude will:

• Fetch the PR diff from GitHub
• Analyze for bugs, security issues, performance problems
• Check code quality and consistency
• Provide a structured review

/simplify — Code Quality Check

After making changes, run /simplify to have Claude review your work:

> /simplify

Claude analyzes recently changed code for:

• Duplicate logic that could be consolidated
• Overly complex implementations
• Performance issues
• Opportunities to use existing utilities

Combining Skills with Regular Prompts

Skills work alongside normal conversation:

> Create a new API endpoint for user profiles
[Claude builds the endpoint]

> /simplify
[Claude reviews what it just built]

> /commit
[Claude commits the changes]

This is a natural development loop: build → review → commit.