CSV: Turn Raw Data Exports Into Answers and Charts

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Official Anthropic skill on GitHub

CSV Data Analysis

Summary

You exported data from Salesforce, Stripe, or Google Analytics. Now you're staring at 10,000 rows trying to figure out what it means.

Instead, just drop in the CSV and ask. Get answers, patterns, and charts without touching a spreadsheet or writing any code.

Stop scrolling through endless rows hoping patterns will jump out. Start asking questions and getting answers.

Ask questions, get answers

Drop in any CSV. Ask what you want to know. Get insights without writing a single formula.

See patterns visually

Claude creates charts and summaries that reveal what's hiding in your data. Trends, outliers, distributions—all visible at a glance.

Clean messy data automatically

Missing values, weird formats, duplicate rows. Claude finds the problems and fixes them so you can focus on analysis.

Pros

  • Analyze any data export without writing code or formulas
  • Get instant charts and visualizations that reveal patterns
  • Clean messy data automatically before analysis
  • Works with exports from Salesforce, Stripe, GA, and any other tool
  • Your data stays on your machine
  • Official Anthropic skill for production data analysis

Cons

  • Very large CSVs (millions of rows) may need to be sampled or split
  • Complex time-series analysis may need multiple focused queries
  • Charts are rendered locally—export as images for sharing

How to Use CSV Data Analysis Skill

Skill command:
1

Install the Skill

Install via the plugin marketplace, or download the skill file directly. Skills auto-activate when relevant—no manual invocation needed.

Option 1: Plugin Marketplace
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills
/plugin install example-skills@anthropic-agent-skills
Option 2: Direct Download
curl -o .claude/skills/csv.md https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/skills/main/skills/csv/SKILL.md
2

Ask What You Need

Be specific. "Which customers churned last month?" beats "analyze this data." The more precise your question, the more useful the answer.

Example Prompt
What are the top 10 products by revenue? Show me month-over-month growth trends.
3

Point to Your File

Drag the CSV into your terminal or paste the path. Your data stays on your machine.

Example Prompt
/csv ~/Downloads/stripe_payments.csv Show me failed payments by country. Which regions have the highest failure rates?
4

Keep Exploring

Claude remembers the data. Ask follow-ups. Drill into segments. No need to re-upload.

Example Prompt
Now filter to just Enterprise customers. How does their payment failure rate compare to SMB?
5

Get Charts and Summaries

Ask for visualizations. Claude creates charts that reveal what the numbers alone can't show.

Example Prompt
Create a chart showing revenue by product category over the last 6 months. Highlight any declining trends.

Example Prompts

Real-world scenarios showing how to use CSV Data Analysis effectively

Scenario: Make sense of a Salesforce export

Your Prompt

/csv I exported our closed-won deals from Salesforce. Show me: (1) Win rate by sales rep, (2) Average deal size by industry, (3) Which lead sources convert best. Give me the numbers and a chart.

Expected Outcome

Claude analyzes the export, calculates the metrics, and generates charts. You see which reps are crushing it, which industries pay more, and where to focus lead gen.

Scenario: Debug payment failures in Stripe data

Your Prompt

/csv This is 6 months of Stripe transactions. Why are we seeing so many failures in Germany? Break down by card type, failure reason, and time of day.

Expected Outcome

Claude segments the failures, identifies patterns (maybe 3D Secure issues, maybe specific card networks), and shows you exactly where to focus.

Scenario: Find churn signals in user data

Your Prompt

/csv Here's our user activity export. Which behaviors predict churn? Compare users who left vs users who stayed. Show me the patterns.

Expected Outcome

Claude compares the cohorts, identifies leading indicators (login frequency, feature usage, support tickets), and visualizes the differences.

Scenario: Clean up messy data before analysis

Your Prompt

/csv This CSV is a mess—duplicate rows, inconsistent date formats, empty values everywhere. Clean it up and show me what we actually have to work with.

Expected Outcome

Claude identifies data quality issues, applies fixes, and gives you a clean dataset. Shows you what was fixed and what might need manual review.

Scenario: Quick answers from Google Analytics export

Your Prompt

/csv From this GA export: Which landing pages have the highest bounce rate? Which traffic sources drive actual conversions, not just visits?

Expected Outcome

Claude analyzes the export and surfaces the metrics that matter. You know where to optimize without building custom reports in GA.

Frequently Asked Questions

Any tool that exports CSV. Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, your database exports, spreadsheets saved as CSV—if it's comma-separated, Claude can analyze it.
Yes. Ask for specific visualizations: bar charts, line graphs, scatter plots, distributions. Claude generates them from your data so you can see patterns that numbers alone don't reveal.
You ask questions in English instead of writing formulas. "Show me customers who bought twice but not three times" takes 10 seconds instead of 10 minutes of COUNTIF wrestling. Claude also handles data cleaning automatically.
Your CSV stays on your machine. Contents are sent to Claude's API for analysis but aren't stored. Check your organization's AI policies for sensitive data.
This is where Claude shines. Inconsistent formats, missing values, duplicate rows, weird characters—Claude identifies issues, cleans them up, and tells you what it fixed. Real data is never clean; Claude deals with it.
Most business CSVs (tens of thousands of rows) work without issue. For massive files (millions of rows), Claude can sample intelligently or you can split by date range. It will suggest the best approach.

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