{"slug": "the-opus-5-skills-upgrade-prompt", "title": "The Opus 5 Skills Upgrade Prompt", "summary": "Anthropic's Opus 5 model upgrade prompt, released for Claude Code, audits and upgrades existing skills through a blind-judged Gauntlet Loop, retiring those that don't outperform the base model. The prompt, which requires Opus 5 or Fable 5, preserves original skills, creates a live HTML dashboard, and only upgrades skills that beat bare Opus 5 at their own job.", "body_md": "# Your skills were built for Opus 4.8.\n\nUpgrade them for Opus 5.\n\nSkills written for older models over-explain, over-constrain, and patch weaknesses Opus 5 doesn’t have — so they now make it **worse**. This one prompt audits every skill you’ve got, then puts the ones you pick through a blind-judged gauntlet: upgraded if that honestly wins, retired if it doesn’t. Paste it into Claude Code and hit run.\n\n```\nAudit every Claude Code skill currently installed and autonomously upgrade the ones I select through a Skill Upgrade Gauntlet.\n\nFirst, find and inspect every installed skill across every available scope. Preserve an immutable copy of every original skill and its resources.\n\nBefore beginning any upgrades, create a live local HTML dashboard showing the complete skill inventory, what each skill does, where it came from, whether it can be edited, and any dependencies or overlaps you discover. Open the dashboard on my computer and give me its link in Claude Code.\n\nThe dashboard is view-only. I…\n```\n\nThat’s the first 7%.\n\nUnlocked for — copy it and go.\n\n## How to run it\n\n### Open Claude Code\n\nOn the machine where your skills live — `.claude/skills`\n\nin a project, or `~/.claude/skills`\n\n. **Opus 5 or Fable 5** both work.\n\n### Paste it, pick your skills\n\nIt inventories every skill, opens a **live dashboard**, and asks which ones to put through the gauntlet. Reply with your picks in Claude Code.\n\n### Let it run\n\nEach pick is blind-benchmarked against the original until it’s honestly better — **upgraded or retired**, with the evidence on the dashboard. It tells you when it’s done.\n\n**Before you run it:** make sure your skills folder is committed to git or backed up. The prompt tells the agent to keep everything reversible, but your own backup is the one that counts.\n\nUnder the hood it’s a [Gauntlet Loop](/gauntlet-loop): every skill gets its own builder and a separate blind critic, and a skill only survives if it beats bare Opus 5 at its own job.\n\nWant a Gauntlet Loop prompt for anything else? [The generator writes one for free.](/gauntlet-loop/generator)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-opus-5-skills-upgrade-prompt", "canonical_source": "https://somethingbig.ai/skills-upgrade", "published_at": "2026-08-07 12:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-20 20:43:16.295616+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "large-language-models", "ai-agents"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "Claude Code", "Opus 5", "Fable 5"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-opus-5-skills-upgrade-prompt", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-opus-5-skills-upgrade-prompt.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-opus-5-skills-upgrade-prompt.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-opus-5-skills-upgrade-prompt.jsonld"}}