AI-Powered OSINT: How to Turn Your Process Into a Claude Skill
We open a new series on using Claude for OSINT. The first instalment shows you how to turn a repeatable procedure into steps Claude executes the same way, every time.
Hello from the OJ team,
This week we open a new series on using Claude for OSINT work. Each instalment takes one capability and builds something you can use the same day.
We start with skills. A skill lets Claude learn a process once and repeat it exactly, every time, for anyone on the team. We explain what skills are, show where to create one, and build a working example you can download and add to your own library.
And of course, we share the latest tradecraft tips and industry news from last week.
Let’s get started.
In case you missed last week…
OSINT Tradecraft Tips & Industry News
Everything you need to know from the past seven days.
Google Earth Pro desktop will no longer be available for download after June 2027 | read more
A free i2 Analyst Notebook certification test is available for those with access to the software, alongside an optional training webinar series to help prepare (note: this is not an endorsement, and we have not been paid to promote it) | find out more
Steve Hedden shared a free resource list on LinkedIn covering 212 knowledge graph tools across 10 categories and 2,012 ontologies, vocabularies, and graphs | explore here
Open source investigations show up in U.S. Justice Department court filings: cybercrime cases like the criminal complaint against alleged hacker Peter Stokes lay out the digital breadcrumbs investigators used, and Ben H. flags these case studies on LinkedIn as a goldmine for learning online investigative techniques | read more
French journalist Jean-Marc Manach has identified more than 15,000 AI-generated news sites in French alone (plus thousands more across other languages), tracing how they exploit Google Discover, plagiarize real journalism, and reach up to 40% of French internet users each month, while sharing the metadata-based methods he uses to detect them and a free browser extension his outlet Next.ink built to flag such sites to readers | find out more
Wired reports that Instagram users with public accounts must now opt out to prevent Meta's Muse Image model from using their photos to generate AI images | read the story
Nico Dekens outlines "evidence poisoning" — synthetic content, fake identities, manufactured consensus, false context, and manipulated AI visibility polluting the open web — and offers a SOURCE framework plus a source-reliability grading model to help OSINT practitioners verify claims before treating them as evidence | read here
How to Turn Your OSINT Process Into a Claude Skill
Claude can now learn a process once and repeat it exactly, every time, for anyone on the team. A skill is a folder of instructions Claude loads automatically when a task calls for it, so nobody has to re-explain the steps in every new chat. For OSINT teams that run on repeatable procedures, from going through standard checklists to leadership briefings, this changes how tradecraft moves out of one analyst’s head and into something the whole team runs the same way. This week we introduce Claude skills, what they are, and build a working example from scratch.
