I used to spend 40 minutes rewriting one caption. Second-guessing the first line, moving the hashtags around, deleting the whole thing and starting over.

I haven't written one from scratch in months. Not because I stopped caring how they sound, but because I taught Claude how they sound, one time, and it does the typing now. I do the taste.

The thing that made it stick is a skill. Here's what that means, and then the exact three steps to build your own.

A skill is just a document of rules Claude follows every time. Your tone, your banned words, your structure, all written down once. You're not re-explaining your voice in every chat. You're saving it, so it's there automatically, forever.
Captions you love screenshots in Coach the samples 3 to 10, until perfect A caption skill writes them every time
The whole arc: feed it your taste, coach it until the samples are right, then save it as a skill that runs on its own.

1. Feed it your taste

Start a new chat in Claude Cowork. Before you ask for anything, you give it something to learn from. Upload screenshots of captions you love. They can be your own best ones, or other people's you wish you'd written. Ten to fifteen is plenty.

This is how it gets your tone. Not from you describing your voice in the abstract, which nobody can do well, but from real examples it can study.

Here are screenshots of captions I love, some mine, some from people whose voice I want to learn from. Study them. Tell me what they have in common: the way the first line works, the length, the rhythm, how they end, how they use hashtags. Describe my voice back to me like you're about to write in it.
Remember: examples beat adjectives. "Study these fifteen captions" teaches it more than any paragraph of you trying to name your own style.

2. Coach it through 3 to 10 samples

Now you make it prove it learned. Ask for a handful of sample captions on different topics. Then here's the actual work, and it's the whole point: you give feedback, and you keep giving feedback, until they're perfect.

Based on everything you just studied, write me 5 sample captions in my voice, each on a different topic. Make them ready to post. After I read them I'm going to tell you what's off, and we'll fix them together until they sound exactly like me.

You are not asking it to nail it on the first try. You're managing it. Too polished, say so. The first line is weak, say so. It used a word you'd never use, cut it. This one is perfect, tell it why so it remembers. Every note you give is teaching material for the next step.

Remember: you are the manager here, not the audience. The samples don't have to be good yet. Your feedback is what makes them good, and that feedback is what the skill gets built from.

3. Have it save the whole thing as a skill

Once a few samples genuinely sound like you, you ask Claude to bottle it. Not from scratch: from this exact conversation. The captions you uploaded, the samples you wrote together, every note you gave. All of it becomes the skill.

Take everything from this whole chat: the captions I uploaded, the samples we wrote, and all the feedback I gave you. Turn it into a skill I can reuse called caption-writer, so you write in this voice automatically every time, without me re-explaining it.

That's the version most people build. But if you want to skip ahead, here's the copy-paste prompt I'd hand a friend. It writes the skill and bakes in real rules at the same time. These are close to my actual Lead with Zoe caption rules. Swap the bracketed parts for yours.

Create a skill called caption-writer that writes my Instagram captions in my voice, every time, without me re-explaining it. Base it on the captions I uploaded and the samples we refined together in this chat. Write these rules into the skill and follow them every time: - All lowercase. Always. - Story first. Open with the real moment or the feeling, never the tips. - Short paragraphs, one to three sentences each, with lots of line breaks. - If there are steps or takeaways, list them with a dash, one line each, plain language. - End with a question that makes people comment: something they confess, count, or choose. - Exactly 5 hashtags, all lowercase. Mix broad ones with niche ones. Always include the two that are core to me: [#claude, #claudeai]. - Keep the energy 15 percent lower than it wants to be. I'm telling, not selling. - Use real specifics from my life [two toddlers, a tech job, 5am workouts], never generic examples. Never use these, they sound like everyone else: "hey guys", "so" as an opener, "without further ado", "let's dive in", "here's the thing", "game-changer", "unlock", "level up". When I paste a raw idea later, give me 3 caption options in this exact voice, ready to post. Save all of this as the skill now.

From then on, you paste a rough idea and it hands back captions that already sound like you. It does the typing. You do the taste.

What "sounds like you" actually looks like

Rules on their own are abstract, so here's what mine produce. Notice the anatomy: a lowercase first line that pulls you in, the story before any tips, the tips as a tight list, a question that begs a reply, and exactly five hashtags. That shape is the skill, running.

i haven't written a caption in months. i grew this to 100k people. the thing writing the words isn't me. i taught claude my voice once. - upload captions you already love - coach it through a few samples - save it all as a skill what would you hand off first? tell me. #claude #claudeai #aitools #workingmom #contentstrategy lowercase hook, one line the story before the tips the list, one line each a question that gets comments exactly 5 hashtags
The skill's whole job is to hit this shape every time, in your words. This is mine.

What to notice

  • Examples first, always. Upload the captions before you ask for anything. It learns your voice from real ones, not from you describing it.
  • The feedback is the product. The samples in step two exist so you can react to them. Your notes are what the skill is actually built from.
  • Build from the conversation, not from a blank page. Step three works because it captures the whole history: the uploads, the samples, the corrections.
  • You stay the editor. It gets you 90% there in seconds. You still make it yours before it posts.
I taught it my voice once. Now it does the typing, and I do the taste.

Once your voice is a skill, the same move works on everything you write the same way twice: your newsletter, your DMs, your product descriptions. If you want the groundwork first, here's the three things to type into Claude that make it way smarter. Build the caption one this week and watch how fast the blank-caption dread goes away.