Teaching Claude Code to use isolated database branches with Agent Skills

Modern LLMs have come a long way in turning prompts into code. They even execute specific developer workflows when asked.

Using Agent Skills, it is now possible to teach Claude Code to get realistic data using isolated developer branches.

We have bundled together a “Xata Claude Skill” that teaches Claude to use isolated database branches. To use it, simply download the xata CLI and execute:

Demo aka “enough talk, show me the goods”

Advantages of Agent Skills

Similar outcomes can be achieved with CLAUDE.md file or by using an MCP server. What are the advantages of using Agent Skills over other alternatives?

The context window advantage

Unlike CLAUDE.md, which is always included in the context window, the prompt and script from a skill are lazy loaded into the context window, decided by the agent. This means cheaper bills as less tokens are used in each chat and better quality as the context window remains focused on the task at hand.

The scripting advantage

Agent Skills aren’t limited to lazy prompt loading. Not only can they execute scripts, they can execute scripts as a black box (without reading the file in the context window but just executing it and loading the output in the context window)

Write once, use anywhere

Instead of writing a fixed prompt and managing it across projects, an Agent Skill can be shared across projects and used by all Claude products (claude Code, Claude apps, API).

Against MCP

Skills have a simple tool calling mechanism in comparison to MCP servers. For example, you can authenticate a CLI with an API key and just instruct the model to use it via CLI. To do something similar with an MCP server, you have to cross the network boundary or have some protocol to pass information between the model’s context window, the actual CLI or API and the MCP server.

Agent Skills can achieve loading data from external tools in the model’s context window in one less level of indirection.

Composability and other benefits

Agent Skills can be combined to form custom complex workflows. Look at the advantages of using Agent Skills here in Anthropic’s documentation.

The API

The API we offer to download the Agent Skill is simple, just run the following command in your project after you have gone through the quickstart guide and the project is initialized.

While there are other ways to make the skill available to Claude products. We prefer this because:

1. It enables you to version the skill
2. It enables you to change the skill a bit per the requirements of a project
3. It is isolated and the simplest setup for a skill (just one command)

Under the hood

In the beginning of this post, we downloaded the Xata claude skill using:

This is the file that got downloaded:

That's right, around 20 lines of prompt telling the LLM how to use various CLIs is all it needs to start following a custom workflow. And because it is plain text, making small adjustments to customize your workflow is also easy.

Conclusion

In this post, we explored how Agent Skills provide a fantastic way to teach Claude Code to work with isolated database branches and how it was able to diagnose and resolve a bug much like a developer would.

We look forward to having you try the Xata platform. If you'd like early access, you can get started today.