Hillnote Skill for Claude

Give Claude the full Hillnote manual. The Hillnote skill is a small folder of instructions — an Agent Skill — that Claude loads on demand whenever your Hillnote workspace comes up, so it works with your documents, decks, and databases like a practiced hand.

At a glance


Download	hillnote-skill.zip — about 100 KB, plain markdown
Works with	claude.ai, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and the Claude API
Contents	`SKILL.md` plus 11 reference guides — documents, slides, canvas, databases, sheets, HTML tools, plugins, troubleshooting, and more
Pairs with	The remote MCP connector, the local MCP server, or a plain workspace folder

What the skill teaches Claude

Which kind of access it has — remote MCP, local MCP, or direct file access — and what each mode can and can't do.
Hillnote's file formats — .slides.md decks, .canvas.md canvases, databases as folders of markdown rows, CSV-backed sheets.
The MCP tools and their quirks — which tool to reach for, capability gaps between modes, pagination, and the built-in authoring guides.
Workspace conventions — documents-registry.json, resources, sidebar plugins, publishing.
How to recover — a troubleshooting guide for sync, publishing, and connection problems.

Skills load on demand: Claude reads the short SKILL.md overview when Hillnote is mentioned, then pulls in only the reference guide the task needs. It costs nothing when you're talking about anything else.

Install on claude.ai and Claude Desktop

Download hillnote-skill.zip.
Open Settings → Capabilities and scroll to Skills.
Choose Upload skill and pick the zip.
Done — mention Hillnote in any chat and Claude loads the skill automatically.

Install for Claude Code

Unzip the download into your skills folder:

unzip ~/Downloads/hillnote-skill.zip -d ~/.claude/skills

That creates ~/.claude/skills/hillnote/SKILL.md. For a single project instead, unzip into the project's .claude/skills/ folder. Claude Code discovers it automatically — ask about your Hillnote workspace to see it engage.

Using the API? Skills can be attached to API requests too — see Anthropic's Agent Skills documentation.

Skill + MCP: knowledge and hands

The skill is knowledge; MCP is hands. Connect the remote MCP endpoint (or the local server) so Claude can actually read and write your workspace, and the skill makes those tools sharper — it even teaches Claude to detect which connection it's on. With no MCP at all, Claude Code can still work on a workspace folder directly, and the skill covers that mode too.

Updating

New Hillnote features mean new skill revisions. To update, download the current zip and upload it again — claude.ai replaces the existing skill. For Claude Code, unzip over the old folder.

If Claude doesn't seem to use the skill, say "Hillnote" explicitly — the skill triggers on Hillnote-related phrasing — and check the skill's own troubleshooting guide (references/troubleshooting.md inside the zip).