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Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?

#91

Post by distances »

jpalomaki wrote: post #55
stanmancan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that what the agents.md in your project is for?

Depends on how much information and details you have. The agents.md always goes into context. Detailed testing or process information might be excessive, when agent is working on UI. Skills are pulled when needed.

I handle the context problem by splitting the details to dozens of small md files. Agents.md acts as a router that directs the llm to correct documentation file/folder according to the task at hand.

This documentation is its own git repo, and the agents.md file has an explicit instruction to update the docs when it has learned something general that can be useful in future sessions. I then occasionally review and prune those docs.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?

#92

Post by anygivnthursday »

If I have a session with something that I expect to do it again, I ask Claude to make a skill out of it and store at user level somewhere at ~./claude/skills I think, so next time I can do just "/xyreport from-to" for example and dont have worry about leaving out things from the prompt or to rediscover some gotchas the agent ran into.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?

#95

Post by toffelx »

I have created a little system for this, placed directly in the ~./skills folder.

I have a configuration file of marketplaces and other skills to fetch, it can look like. I have my own marketplaces as well, including ones from my company. I use vercel's tool for managing skills with npx, but to easily handle specifically _which_ skills to fetch, the config file is set up as follows:

  SOURCES = {
    'some-marketplace-name': [
        'some-skill',
        'another-skill',
        'yet-another',
    ],
    'https://designsystem.yourcompany.com': [], (empty list: fetch all skills)
  }
from there I simply run "skills.py" (a single helper) to clean/fetch updated versions of the skills.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?

#96

Post by oakesm9 »

distances wrote: post #91
jpalomaki wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how much information and details you have. The agents.md always goes into context. Detailed testing or process information might be excessive, when agent is working on UI. Skills are pulled when needed.

I handle the context problem by splitting the details to dozens of small md files. Agents.md acts as a router that directs the llm to correct documentation file/folder according to the task at hand. This documentation is its own git repo, and the agents.md file has an explicit instruction to update the docs when it has learned something general that can be useful in future sessions. I then occasionally review and pru…

That's exactly what skills do.

The description in the front-matter (at the top of the skill markdown file) is the only thing in the context and used by the agent to determine when to read in the rest of the skill file.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?

#99

Post by sinuhe69 »

When I work on a new problem and the agent struggles with it, I will ask the agent to distill the knowledge and experiences it gained during the session into a skill file. Then I review and publish it depends on the assistant system. I find this is an effective way for the agents to learn new skills, both from its own discoveries but also from my steering and the mistakes it made.

If you work in a niche or on special problems, this template could be useful.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?

#100

Post by resonious »

alexhans wrote: post #43

- I don't find skills, I create them - Keep them organised in software repos that you install with symlinks for all coding harnesses that you have. Progressive disclosure based on the frontmatter does the rest. - I make sure they work with AI evals. Think of them like integration tests to prove behaviour. They're useful to optimize your flows. I try to make my skills be mostly a translation between natural language a…

Big yes on this. I do not understand the appeal of skill shopping. The one exception I have is things like the Axiom Apple development skills and e.g. the official Flutter skills. At that point the skills are just docs though. It's either I remember to paste a URL to the official docs or I just install the skill. But shopping around for random skills just sounds extremely unappealing.
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