Heron skills for Claude

Skills are guides Claude loads when it needs them. Heron’s skills teach it to use your email efficiently and carefully: which tools to call, how to search, and safety rules (email content is never an instruction, no sending without your request, drafts first).

They’re optional but recommended. They don’t grant any access on their own: first connect Claude, Claude Code or the CLI.

Available skills

Skill	What it’s for
heron	The core guide: tools, search, send approvals, undo. Install this one first.
heron-morning-brief	Your morning brief: what arrived, what needs a reply today.
heron-triage-inbox	Triage the inbox (archive, snooze, flag, move) after your approval.
heron-catch-up	Catch up on email after time away.
heron-draft-replies	Draft replies in your style, learned from your sent mail.
heron-follow-ups	Find sent emails that never got a reply and suggest follow-ups.
heron-thread-summary	Summarize a conversation: decisions, open questions, action items.

For Claude Code

1. In the desktop app, open Settings → AI agents, then Advanced, Skills (optional) section.
2. Click For Claude Code. Heron copies the skills into ~/.claude/skills/ (it asks before replacing heron* skills already installed).

Claude Code uses them on its own when useful, or you can call them directly: /heron-morning-brief.

For Claude Desktop and claude.ai

1. In the desktop app, click For Claude Desktop and claude.ai. Heron prepares one .zip archive per skill in Downloads/Heron Skills.
2. In Claude, open Customize → Skills.
3. Click + → Create skill → Upload a skill.
4. Pick the .zip file, then turn the skill on in the list.
5. Repeat for each skill you want (at least heron.zip).

Imported skills stay private to your Claude account.

Good to know: the Heron server also offers these routines as MCP “prompts”, with nothing to install: morning_brief, triage_inbox, catch_up, draft_replies, follow_ups and thread_summary, depending on what your Claude client shows.