4 ms·

I will never understand why someone would go through all the trouble of developing this cool idea, without bothering to link a demo or include sample output. I

I will never understand why someone would go through all the trouble of developing this cool idea, without bothering to link a demo or include sample output. I see this every day on HN. So the only way I can see what this skill actually looks like is to download and run it myself? No thank you.

giwook 5mo ago
The SKILL.md is right there, you can just read it to see what it does.
- testycool 5mo ago
  A sample output will give the user an idea of whether the project is worth their time.
- dcrazy 5mo ago
  “The recipe is right there, you can just read it to see how it tastes.”
  - giwook 5mo ago
    Poor analogy.
gbro3n 5mo ago
I'm still finding skill use to be far less reliable than clear instruction in AGENTS.md - I appreciate the idea is to give the agent the opportunity not to add the skill if not relevant to avoid context bloat, but there's no way (without an explicit instruction in AGENTS.md) to ensure that the agent will use the skill, and that point they might as well be any markdown file referenced at any location. While building https://www.agentkanban.io https://www.agentkanban.io (a Github CoPilot integrated task board), I experimented a lot with instruction placement. A single degree of separation from AGENTS.md works really well (I needed a robust means of having the agent pick up task specific IDs and so settled on a file called INSTRUCTION.md in a file managed by the tool which avoids polluting AGENTS.md as much as possible). I experimented with skills, but they were skipped too often for the tool to work as reliably as it now does.
- adastra22 5mo ago
  Claude auto-injects skill descriptions into the context, and is pretty good about using them. I don’t know about the other harnesses.
  - enobrev 5mo ago
    I've had cases where it doesn't explicitly use a skill I've added BUT it still performs the actions described in the skill on its own more often than it did before I created the skill. I'd rather it use the skill for consistency, but having it follow most of the steps most of the time in cases I've forgotten to explicitly call out the skill is a better outcome.
    - adastra22 5mo ago
      Sounds like you need to package some bash scripts with your skill and have the SKILL.md be "call these scripts to do X, Y, Z"
- aaronbrethorst 5mo ago
  in the case of Claude Code, I explicitly kick off skills I want to use by prefixing their name with a `/` e.g.: /go
- mywittyname 5mo ago
  Question for you, since you seem like you know what you're doing here: How do I learn about stuff like agents.md? I feel like every week there's a new Claude feature people are talking about and I have no idea how they learned about it.
  - hydra-f 5mo ago
    I'm not the guy in question, but I can offer a few pointers other than the ones I did in my other message. Tailor things to make them your own. First, imagine the kind of workflow you want. Take a pen and a paper and map it out. Second, decide on a format for your agent-related files. Third, offer the prior information to an agent to create a few general iterations. Read them and ask yourself something along the lines of: "Will cutting this affect the workflow?". If not, cut it out. Instead of jumping and copying the first thing you find, gather knowledge by reading different workflows first. Don't limit yourself to a single field, either. For example, learning about Bloom's Taxonomy can change how you view certain things, so expand your horizons. Take small steps. It takes a lot of experimentation to reach a good enough workflow.

giwook 5mo ago

The SKILL.md is right there, you can just read it to see what it does.

testycool 5mo ago
A sample output will give the user an idea of whether the project is worth their time.
dcrazy 5mo ago
“The recipe is right there, you can just read it to see how it tastes.”
- giwook 5mo ago
  Poor analogy.

gbro3n 5mo ago

I'm still finding skill use to be far less reliable than clear instruction in AGENTS.md - I appreciate the idea is to give the agent the opportunity not to add the skill if not relevant to avoid context bloat, but there's no way (without an explicit instruction in AGENTS.md) to ensure that the agent will use the skill, and that point they might as well be any markdown file referenced at any location. While building https://www.agentkanban.io https://www.agentkanban.io (a Github CoPilot integrated task board), I experimented a lot with instruction placement. A single degree of separation from AGENTS.md works really well (I needed a robust means of having the agent pick up task specific IDs and so settled on a file called INSTRUCTION.md in a file managed by the tool which avoids polluting AGENTS.md as much as possible). I experimented with skills, but they were skipped too often for the tool to work as reliably as it now does.

adastra22 5mo ago
Claude auto-injects skill descriptions into the context, and is pretty good about using them. I don’t know about the other harnesses.
- enobrev 5mo ago
  I've had cases where it doesn't explicitly use a skill I've added BUT it still performs the actions described in the skill on its own more often than it did before I created the skill. I'd rather it use the skill for consistency, but having it follow most of the steps most of the time in cases I've forgotten to explicitly call out the skill is a better outcome.
  - adastra22 5mo ago
    Sounds like you need to package some bash scripts with your skill and have the SKILL.md be "call these scripts to do X, Y, Z"
aaronbrethorst 5mo ago
in the case of Claude Code, I explicitly kick off skills I want to use by prefixing their name with a `/` e.g.: /go
mywittyname 5mo ago
Question for you, since you seem like you know what you're doing here: How do I learn about stuff like agents.md? I feel like every week there's a new Claude feature people are talking about and I have no idea how they learned about it.
- hydra-f 5mo ago
  I'm not the guy in question, but I can offer a few pointers other than the ones I did in my other message. Tailor things to make them your own. First, imagine the kind of workflow you want. Take a pen and a paper and map it out. Second, decide on a format for your agent-related files. Third, offer the prior information to an agent to create a few general iterations. Read them and ask yourself something along the lines of: "Will cutting this affect the workflow?". If not, cut it out. Instead of jumping and copying the first thing you find, gather knowledge by reading different workflows first. Don't limit yourself to a single field, either. For example, learning about Bloom's Taxonomy can change how you view certain things, so expand your horizons. Take small steps. It takes a lot of experimentation to reach a good enough workflow.