One dense page, then a skill
Cut a real document to one page — then never do it again
Where: Claude Code · Folder: Create a new folder
called
onepagerStart a new Claude Code session
before you begin.
Everything so far has been about making things. This one is about doing a real job once, badly-fast, and then bottling it so the second time costs nothing.
The job: a long results transcript, and someone who needs the point in thirty seconds.
Step 1 — Cut it down
Prompt:
Read this document:
https://www.prosus.com/~/media/Files/P/prosus-corp-v2/results-reports-and-events-archive/latest-results/hy2026/hy2026-results-video-transcript.pdf
Turn it into ONE dense HTML page, in this order:
- the headline: what actually happened, in a sentence
- the 3 numbers that matter, big
- then the proof: why those three, and what backs them
Cut everything else. Use my person.md for tone and my design.md for styling.
It must fit on one screen without scrolling on a laptop.
At the end, tell me what you dropped and why — outside the page, in chat.
That last line is the one people skip, and it's the most useful sentence in the prompt. A summary you can't interrogate is a summary you can't trust.
Step 2 — Argue with the cut
Read what it dropped. Almost always one thing is wrong.
Prompt:
You dropped something I need — put it back and cut something else instead.
Keep it to one screen.
Do that once or twice. You're not editing the page; you're teaching it what "matters" means for you.
Step 3 — Turn the whole thing into a skill
You just did a job you will do again. Bottle it.
Prompt:
Create a skill called dense-onepager from what we just did.
Whenever I ask for a report, brief, summary or "TL;DR" of a document, it should
cut the source to ONE dense page: the headline, the 3 numbers that matter, then
the proof. Tone from person.md, styling from design.md. It must always tell me
what it dropped and why.
Write it to ~/.claude/skills/ and show me the file.
Then test it cold. Start a new Claude Code session, fresh folder, and give it any long document — a PDF link, a report, a strategy deck:
Prompt:
Give me a one-pager on <paste any long document or URL>
You never say the word "skillSkillA reusable bundle of know-how that Claude loads on demand. Lives as a folder of markdown on your machine; kicks in when the conversation matches what the skill is for.". It just happens.
Stuck?Debrief — what should have happened
- A one-page HTMLHTMLThe markup language for web pages — defines the structure: headings, paragraphs, buttons, images. CSS styles it; JavaScript makes it interactive. summary of a real Prosus results document, in your tone and your colours.
- A list of what got cut — which is where you found out whether you agreed with it.
- A
dense-onepagerskill that fires on the phrase "one-pager" from now on.
The pattern is the same one from Exercise 2.1, applied to a document instead of a deck: do the job once by hand, then ask the agent to turn the transcript of that job into a skill. You are not writing skills. You are noticing when you've just done something twice.
The uncomfortable question this raises: how many one-pagers has your team written by hand this year, and how many of them were the same one-pager?
Stuck?FAQ for this exercise
Q: It couldn't read the PDF. A: Ask it to download the file first and then read it locally — "download that PDF into this folder, then read it." If the link is dead, use any long PDF you have; the exercise doesn't depend on this specific document.
Q: "One screen without scrolling" — it ignored that. A: Tell it to open the page and check. "Open it in a browser at 1440×900, screenshot it, and tell me if it fits." Same see-critique-iterate loopLoopWhat makes Claude an agent and not a chatbot. Instead of one ask-and-answer turn, a loop runs Claude over and over: act, observe what changed, decide the next step, repeat. you'll run in 4.2 — the agent can look at its own work.
Q: My three numbers aren't the three it picked. A: Good — that's the exercise. Say which three you want and why, then bake that reasoning into the skill in Step 3. That sentence is what makes the skill yours rather than generic.
Q: When does the skill actually fire? A: When your request matches its description. If it's not firing, ask: "why didn't dense-onepager trigger?" and then widen the description in the file. Skills are matched on their description line — that line is the whole interface.
OptionalGo deeper
Point it at the thing you dread.
Give me a one-pager on <the longest document sitting in your inbox right now>.
Then, if the result is useful, run the capture move again on whatever else you do repeatedly — a weekly update, a meeting prep, a competitor check:
Turn what we just did into a skill. Ask me the questions you need answered to
make it work without me next time, then write it to ~/.claude/skills/.
That prompt — ask me what you need, then write the skill — is arguably the single highest-leverage sentence in this entire course.