Skills

Skills are structured documentation packages that teach Claude how to write better EdgarTools code. They guide Claude to use the right APIs, avoid common mistakes, and follow best practices.

What Do Skills Do?

Without skills, Claude might write verbose code using low-level APIs:

# Without skills -- verbose, fragile
facts = company.get_facts()
income = facts.income_statement(periods=1, annual=True)
if income is not None and not income.empty:
    if 'Revenue' in income.columns:
        revenue = income['Revenue'].iloc[0]

With skills, Claude writes idiomatic code:

# With skills -- clean, correct
financials = company.get_financials()
revenue = financials.get_revenue()

Skills cover patterns, sharp edges (common mistakes), and API routing decisions across six domains.

Installing Skills

For Claude Code (auto-discovered):

from edgar.ai import install_skill
install_skill()  # Installs to ~/.claude/skills/edgartools/

For Claude Desktop (upload as project knowledge):

from edgar.ai import package_skill
package_skill()  # Creates edgartools.zip

Upload the ZIP to a Claude Desktop Project.

Skill Domains

Domain	What It Covers
core	Company lookup, filing search, API routing, quick reference
financials	Financial statements, metrics, multi-company comparison
holdings	13F filings, institutional portfolios
ownership	Insider transactions (Form 4), ownership summaries
reports	10-K, 10-Q, 8-K document sections
xbrl	XBRL fact extraction, statement rendering

Skills vs MCP Server

I want to...	Use
Ask Claude questions about companies and filings	MCP Server
Have Claude write EdgarTools code for me	Skills
Both	Install both -- they complement each other

Skills improve code generation. The MCP Server provides data access. They solve different problems and work well together.