Claude for Private Equity
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Leveraging Skills: Procedures Claude Uses on Demand

A skill is your team's way of doing a recurring private equity task, saved once so Claude Code applies it every time.

CLAUDE.md holds the rules that are always true. A skill holds how you do one recurring job: pulling KPIs from a monthly pack, screening a CIM, building a diligence question list. Write it once, and Claude Code follows your team’s method every time the job comes up.

How it works

A skill is a folder with a plain-text file called SKILL.md: a one-line description of when to use it, then the steps in plain English. Claude Code uses it on its own when a request matches the description, or when you type its name, such as /kpi-pack-extractor. Save it in the project’s .claude/skills folder and everyone working in that project gets it.

Skills worth creating

  • KPI pack extraction: pull the standard KPIs from a portfolio company’s monthly pack, checked against plan.
  • CIM first screen: your fund’s screening questions, applied the same way to every teaser and CIM.
  • Diligence question list: turn a data room index into questions by workstream.
  • IC memo section: draft in your committee’s house structure and tone.
  • Expert call notes: summarize every call in the same format, ready to compare.

An example

Template · kpi-pack-extractor/SKILL.md 
---
# Version: 1.0
# Tested on: Claude [model name], [month and year], by [your name]
description: Pulls the standard KPIs from a portfolio company's monthly management pack and checks them against plan. Use when someone attaches or mentions a monthly pack, P&L, or KPI submission.
---

1. Find revenue, gross margin, EBITDA, headcount, and cash in the pack. Note the sheet or page each came from.
2. If a KPI appears twice with different values, show both and ask which is right.
3. If a KPI is missing, write "not in pack" and ask for it. Never estimate.
4. Compare each figure with plan.xlsx in this folder and give the variance as a percentage.
5. Output one table: KPI, actual, plan, variance, source.

The Submit view of the PortCo Pulse Dashboard shows this procedure in action.

Making your own

Do the task once with Claude Code until it is right, then ask Claude to save it. A skill holds method, never a client’s facts.

Prompt · Turn a finished task into a skill 
Turn the procedure we just followed into a skill called kpi-pack-extractor in this project's .claude/skills folder. Write the description in the words people will use to ask for it, keep every check we added, add a Version and Tested on line as comments at the top of the frontmatter, and show me the SKILL.md before saving.

Use one that already exists

You do not always have to write one. Skills others have built come packaged in plugins, and plugins are listed in catalogs called marketplaces.

  1. Find where they are. Browse Anthropic’s catalog at claude.com/plugins. Inside Claude Code, type /plugin and open the Marketplaces tab to see which catalogs you have. If Anthropic’s official one is missing, add it with /plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-official. Your firm may also publish its own library of approved plugins.
  2. Install one. In /plugin, open the Discover tab, pick a plugin, and install it for yourself or for the whole project. Its skills are then ready to use.

Much of the official catalog is aimed at software work, and a plugin can run software on your computer, so install only what your firm has approved, and ask IT if you are unsure.