Claude, FTO Triage — Can Claude Clear My Product of Patent Risk?

Can Claude clear a new product of patent risk before it launches? Not quite. Anthropic's fto-triage skill screens a described product or feature against a fixed set of claim elements, keywords, and jurisdictions, and returns a structured triage report. Deciding whether you're actually clear to operate is still a decision for a person, not the skill.

What a Claude Skill is

A Claude Skill is a folder Claude reads before it works. The fto-triage skill is one file, written in plain language, holding the full instruction set: no hidden logic sitting somewhere else. Claude reads that file and then acts on it. The file is the program, which means anyone can open it and see exactly what the skill will and won't do before running it.

How the screening pipeline runs

The skill's steps run in a fixed order, top to bottom, and only branch where a step in the file explicitly says to. There's no improvisation layered on top. For freedom-to-operate work specifically, that means the same checklist gets applied every time, regardless of who is running it or what day it is.

The actual constraint the skill checks

The interesting part is what the skill is actually built to look for: it screens a described product or feature against the claim elements, keywords, and jurisdictions that the skill file specifies, then flags anything that matches for a closer look. Stay inside that checklist, and the report holds the same shape every time you run it. This is a triage tool in the literal sense: it sorts and flags, it doesn't adjudicate.

What it returns, and what it doesn't

The output is a triage report that flags matches against the fixed checklist. It is consistent, same checklist in, same report out, but it is not a legal opinion and not a clearance to ship. A skill like this can narrow down where a closer look is warranted; it cannot replace the judgment of a person qualified to make an actual freedom-to-operate determination.

Trying it yourself

A direct way to see the mechanism is to describe a real (or realistic) feature to Claude and ask it to read the fto-triage skill, state exactly what information it needs from you before running any check, and then triage your description against its checklist, explaining what it flags and why. Watching that exchange makes clear that the skill isn't reasoning freely about patent law. It's applying a checklist someone wrote down, one step at a time.

Key takeaways

• Claude's fto-triage skill screens a product description against claim elements, keywords, and jurisdictions specified in a plain-language skill file.
• The skill's steps run in a fixed, linear order; nothing branches unless the file says so.
• The output is a structured triage report that flags matches for a closer look, not a legal clearance.
• The same input produces the same report every time, but deciding whether you're actually clear to operate remains a human decision.
• Asking Claude to state what it needs before it screens anything is a useful way to see the skill's boundaries directly.

Who this is for

Founders, product managers, and in-house counsel who want an early, structured pass at patent risk before a launch, and anyone curious about what a legal-flavored Claude Skill can and cannot responsibly do.