Claude gains latest Skills

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Keep in mind that scene in The Matrix where Neo downloads capabilities directly into his brain? Anthropic just gave Claude the identical power — except it’s on your company’s workflows.

The brand new Skills feature packages entire processes into folders that Claude loads on demand, an easy solution which may be more powerful than it appears.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Anthropic’s Skills teach Claude your workflows

• Pew poll shows global AI concern outweighs excitement

• Generate on-brand presentations with Claude Skills

• OpenAI recruits black hole physicist for science initiative

• 4 latest AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ANTHROPIC

🌟 Anthropic’s Skills teach Claude your workflows

The Rundown: Anthropic just released Skills for Claude, a folder-based system that lets organizations bundle workflows, procedures, and executable scripts into packages their AI assistant can autonomously access when handling specific tasks.

The small print:

• Skills function as directory packages containing instruction files, code scripts, and reference materials that Claude loads dynamically based on task relevance.

• The system uses “progressive disclosure,” with Claude first seeing skill names and descriptions, then deciding which components to activate for a workflow.

• Users can construct custom skills through an interactive “skill-creator” assistant requiring no manual file editing or coding expertise.

• Multiple skills may coordinate, allowing agents to mix for tasks like brand guidelines with financial reporting templates in a single workflow.

Why it matters: Anthropic’s Alex Albert summed it up well in comparing Skills to “loading in” specialized knowledge, like in The Matrix, and the true upgrade is simplifying the method. By packaging expertise into folders somewhat than code, Skills can higher infuse enterprise knowledge and workflows with real agentic capabilities.

TOGETHER WITH RETOOL

🚀 AI AppGen that’s able to deploy

The Rundown: Most AI dev tools stop at prototypes. Retool’s AI-assisted dev capabilities create full-stack apps which are connected to your data, deployed in your environment, and secure by default — taking you from prompt to production in minutes.

With Retool, you get:

• Prompt to a working app you trust in minutes

• Built-in security and role-based access

• Edits grounded in context

• Deployment in your selected environment

Construct with AI that knows your enterprise.

THE WORLD & AI

 😨 Pew poll shows global AI concern outweighs excitement

The Rundown: Pew Research just released latest results from a survey of over 28,000 adults across 25 countries on AI sentiment, finding nervousness outpacing optimism for the technology globally.

The small print:

• 50% of respondents within the U.S., Italy, Australia, and Greece report anxiety over rising AI use, with Israel, South Korea, and Sweden emerging most optimistic.

• The EU ranks as essentially the most trusted regulatory body at 53% confidence, beating out each the U.S. (37%) and China (27%) for perceived oversight credibility.

• Young adults under 35 consistently report each greater AI awareness and optimism in comparison with those over 50, with major gaps in countries like Greece.

Why it matters: The AI wave is here, but contrary to what we see in our tech-forward bubble, not everyone is happy about it. These results expose some interesting divides (like countries with essentially the most AI exposure harboring a few of the deepest anxiety) that give a wider view of how the world is grappling with the transformative tech.

AI TRAINING

📊 Generate on-brand presentations with Claude Skills

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn learn how to create a custom Claude Skill that routinely generates presentations following your organization’s brand guidelines, eliminating hours of manual formatting and logo placement.

Step-by-step:

1. Create a “Brand_Guidelines” folder with Skill.md file containing your brand specs (colours, fonts, logo rules) in YAML format, plus a /resources subfolder along with your logo.png

2. Zip your entire Brand_Guidelines folder (right-click → compress on Mac/Windows). Don’t zip just the contents inside

3. Go to Claude Settings → Capabilities, enable “Code execution and file creation”, then upload your Brand_Guidelines.zip under the Skills section

4. Prompt Claude: “Create a 10-slide PowerPoint for [topic] following our company brand guidelines with logo,” and it routinely applies your colours, fonts, and logo placement

5. Download the presentation or save on to Google Drive if connected

Pro tip: Reference your sample presentation in prompts by saying “match the layout kind of sample_presentation.pptx” to get Claude to repeat your slide designs each time.

PRESENTED BY UNFRAME

📊 The 2025 Enterprise AI Trends Report

The Rundown: Discover how top enterprises are using AI to spice up efficiency, scale innovation, and manage risk in 2025. This exclusive report reveals the important thing trends shaping AI strategies and the way leaders are overcoming barriers like data quality and tech compatibility to drive real transformation.

Findings from the report include:

• 66% of execs place productivity and knowledge access on the core of AI strategies

• 55% of enterprises state data quality & availability as the highest barrier to scaling AI

• Only 16% of orgs have fully integrated AI, with tech compatibility as a key barrier

Download the report.

AI RESEARCH

🧪 OpenAI recruits black hole physicist for science initiative

The Rundown: OpenAI announced the hiring of theoretical physicist Alex Lupsasca as the primary academic researcher for its OpenAI for Science division, with the team focused on advancing AI-driven discoveries in areas like scientific reasoning, math, and physics.

The small print:

• The initiative goals to mix AI models with scientific tooling, positioning itself as “the subsequent great scientific instrument” for researchers.

• Lupsaca said GPT-5-Pro “completely modified his mind” on AI in research, taking lower than half-hour on a physics problem that took him days.

• OpenAI VP Kevin Weil also revealed that GPT-5 has already shown “limited novel research abilities” across math, quantum theory, biology, and more.

Why it matters: OpenAI has been criticized for ‘focusing’ on releases like Sora’s social video platform or less restrictive content generation, but many miss out on the Google-style multi-front strategy playing out. The industry leader appears to be confident it could possibly play an enormous role in your entire AI stack, from TikTok-style apps to scientific breakthroughs.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🎨 FLORA – AI canvas for brand and marketing teams to ideate, iterate, and refine their creative work with full creative control*

• 💨 Claude 4.5 Haiku – Anthropic’s latest small, cost-efficient model

• 🎥 Veo 3.1 – Google’s upgraded video generation model

• 🎬 Apps – Runway’s latest mini-tools for editing and creating images and videos

*Sponsored Listing

📰 The whole lot else in AI today

Apple AI search executive Ke Yang is reportedly leaving the corporate to hitch Meta, marking one other high-profile departure from Apple’s AI division.

Microsoft introduced latest AI updates with Windows 11, including a voice-activated ‘Hey Copilot’ command and Vision capabilities that see users’ screens and take actions.

Anthropic launched Microsoft 365 integration, enabling direct access to SharePoint, Outlook, and Teams data, alongside enterprise seek for Claude.

Cognition released SWE-grep and SWE-grep-mini, a brand new series of models that speed up code context retrieval by 10x while matching frontier model accuracy.

Google Labs creative director Henry Daubrez posted that the rumors surrounding the Veo 3.1 were overhyped, emphasizing it’s a “partial upgrade and never a revolution.”

OpenAI rolled out latest updates to its Sora 2 app, including a Storyboards feature for planning outputs and longer video generations of as much as 25 seconds.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

‘Today’s workflow comes from reader Vicky D. in Kent, OH:

“I volunteer at my local dog shelter. After attending to know a dog, I write kid’s books about them within the hopes of getting them adopted. I prompt in regards to the dog’s personality, breed, and skills. AI then helps me develop my story. I upload some images of the dog and am prompted to create images for the several parts of the story. I then compile the book in Canva to create the ultimate PDF and upload it to my publisher!”

How do you utilize AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Google’s latest AI video upgrade

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Meta and Anduril’s AI war helmet

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Waymo robotaxis head to London

• Today’s AI tool guide: Generate on-brand presentations with Claude Skills

• RSVP to next workshop today @1PM EST: Construct AI teams with Zapier agents

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown