A Claude Skill is a small package that teaches Claude how to do one specific thing well: clone an Elementor page, run a WordPress backup, plan a Divi library import. You install a skill once, then every prompt that touches that workflow gets Claude's full attention on the details that matter, no re-explaining required. This is the piece that sits on top of Royal MCP.
The Problem With Talking to Claude About WordPress
Anyone who has actually used an MCP client with WordPress hits the same wall. The tools work. Claude can read your posts, update products, replace text on an Elementor page. But every conversation starts from zero. You spend the first three messages explaining which tool to use, how to sequence the calls, and why the naive approach breaks on Elementor 4.x atomic widgets or a Divi 5 block-format page.
By the time Claude finally understands the workflow, you're four rounds deep and paying for context tokens on setup instead of the actual task. Next session, same thing.
Claude Skills fix this. A skill is a small text package that ships the workflow context alongside the tool descriptions. Claude loads it on demand, follows the sequenced steps, respects the gotchas, and never asks you to explain any of it again.
What a Claude Skill Actually Is
Under the hood, a skill is a .md file (plus optional supporting files) that Claude loads into its working context when the topic comes up. It usually contains:
- A short description of what the skill covers (Claude uses this to decide when to activate it)
- The exact tool names and argument shapes it should use, in order
- Known gotchas: things that look right but silently break
- Rollback patterns for when a write goes sideways
- Example prompts and expected responses
Think of it as the “lessons learned” document you would give a new developer joining your team, except Claude reads it in a fraction of a second and applies it immediately.
Tools are the individual functions Claude can call (e.g. elementor_clone_page). MCP is the protocol that exposes those tools to Claude in a standard way. Skills are the workflow layer on top that tells Claude how to combine tools into an outcome you actually want. All three layers are needed to get real work done.
How Skills Sit on Top of Royal MCP
Royal MCP is the free WordPress plugin that gives Claude 170+ tools for reading and writing your site: WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi, ACF, media, users, everything. It is the “what tools exist” layer. Skills are the “how to use them” layer.
The pairing matters. Without MCP, skills have nothing to call. Without skills, MCP tools sit there waiting for you to teach Claude how to sequence them properly. Together, one install and one prompt gets Claude from “curious about your site” to “produced a cloned landing page ready for your review.”
The three skills live at the free, community-owned Royal MCP Skills Hub. Nothing to buy. Paste the skill URL into Claude Desktop or claude.ai, and it activates for every future conversation.
The Launch Skills
Three skills at launch, all free, all on the Hub. Each targets a different flavor of WordPress work.
Elementor Claude Skill
Clone a working page, replace text and images for a new variant, apply library templates to any page, repair pages where the Elementor render is out of sync with the post content. Optimized for Elementor 3.x containers and Elementor 4.x atomic widgets, with explicit handling for the widget types that need special treatment (image-box, image-carousel, icon-list, tabs, testimonial, and about a dozen others). Elementor Claude Skill →
Divi Claude Skill
Divi 4 shortcodes and Divi 5 blocks under one roof. Clone a page as a fresh draft (regenerating D5 clientIds so the duplicate opens in the editor without collisions), find-and-replace text with dry-run preview, swap images across every image-bearing element on a page, import a saved Divi Library entry to any target page in merge or replace mode. All destructive writes come with 72-hour undo tokens. Divi Claude Skill →
SiteVault Claude Skill
Backup workflows for both the free SiteVault plugin from WordPress.org and SiteVault Pro. Trigger backups, poll status through the async progress lifecycle, list existing backups, review the schedule. The skill teaches Claude how to interpret the progress phases (database, files, upload) so the AI can tell you what's happening while a backup runs instead of getting stuck at 40%. SiteVault Claude Skill →
What This Looks Like in Practice
The video at the top of this article walks through a real example: taking an existing city-specific services page and generating a variant for a different city. The prompt is one line:
“Confirm demo connector and use
/elementor-mcpto duplicate LA Services page to Denver services.”
Claude's response, effectively: “Ok give me like 6 mins.” Then it runs through the sequence, cloning the page, walking every widget, replacing every “Los Angeles” with “Denver,” swapping the hero image, saving as a draft, and reporting the new page ID.
Notice what did not happen. You did not explain to Claude what “clone” means in an Elementor context. You did not describe how to walk the widget tree. You did not warn it about atomic widgets. The skill already knew all of that. Your prompt was one line because the skill packaged the other four rounds of context that would otherwise be your job.
Every destructive write in that sequence issues a 72-hour undo token. If the LA-to-Denver conversion produces something you dislike, one mcp_undo_last_operation call reverses it. No manual cleanup.
How to Install a Skill
- Install Royal MCP free from the WordPress plugin directory. Connect Claude Desktop, Claude web, ChatGPT, or any MCP client to the MCP endpoint on your site (OAuth or API key).
- Browse the Skills Hub and open the skill you want (Elementor, Divi, or SiteVault).
- Copy the skill URL from that page.
- In Claude Desktop or claude.ai, paste the URL into a new conversation. Claude loads the skill; it stays active for every future conversation that touches the topic.
- Prompt normally. The skill handles the rest.
For step-by-step setup including connector configuration for each AI client, see the Royal MCP setup guide.
The Skills Hub is community-owned and free. No account required, no lock-in, nothing gated behind a paid tier. Every skill file is downloadable and forkable so you can adapt it to your own workflows. The value is in the curation and the community, not in owning the file.
What's Coming Next
The Hub launches with three skills. More are in scoping: WooCommerce (product creation, coupon management, batch price updates), Yoast SEO and Rank Math (meta workflows, cornerstone content mapping), UpdraftPlus (adapter workflow parallel to SiteVault), and cross-plugin composers that chain skills together into higher-level operations.
The community skill submission flow is open. If you have a workflow you have refined through five conversations with Claude, package it as a skill so nobody else has to have those same five conversations.