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Agent Skills

addyosmani.com

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Re: Agent Skills

#151

Post by DeathArrow »

_pdp_ wrote: post #105
zmmmmm wrote: post #18

I was surprised how long some of these skills are. They are pages and pages long with tables and checkbox lists and code examples, etc. Curious how normal that is - it would only take a couple of these to really fill the context alot.

The reason they are long is because these skills are produced mostly by Claude Code and Opus and no sensible human will read these files, let alone build a mental model around them. There is just layers of assumptions that this works - when in reality it doesn't and it is wasteful. Here is a fun experiment. Ask any LLM to write something vaguely familiar. For example, ask it "write a fib". Since almost all LLMs are f…

[flagged]

Re: Agent Skills

#152

Post by [deleted] »

esperent wrote: post #146
_pdp_ wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason they are long is because these skills are produced mostly by Claude Code and Opus and no sensible human will read these files, let alone build a mental model around them. There is just layers of assumptions that this works - when in reality it doesn't and it is wasteful. Here is a fun experiment. Ask any LLM to write something vaguely familiar. For example, ask it "write a fib". Since almost all LLMs are f…

I just tried it with Gemini pro. I think this answer is about as good as you can expect for such an ambiguous question. Write a fib Since "fib" can mean a couple of different things, I've got you covered for both! 1. A Little Lie (A Fib) "I'm actually typing this to you from a sunny beach in the Bahamas, sipping a piña colada." (Since I'm an AI, that is definitely a fib!) 2. The Fibonacci Sequence If you meant the cl…

[deleted]

Re: Agent Skills

#153

Post by _pdp_ »

esperent wrote: post #146
_pdp_ wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason they are long is because these skills are produced mostly by Claude Code and Opus and no sensible human will read these files, let alone build a mental model around them. There is just layers of assumptions that this works - when in reality it doesn't and it is wasteful. Here is a fun experiment. Ask any LLM to write something vaguely familiar. For example, ask it "write a fib". Since almost all LLMs are f…

I just tried it with Gemini pro. I think this answer is about as good as you can expect for such an ambiguous question. Write a fib Since "fib" can mean a couple of different things, I've got you covered for both! 1. A Little Lie (A Fib) "I'm actually typing this to you from a sunny beach in the Bahamas, sipping a piña colada." (Since I'm an AI, that is definitely a fib!) 2. The Fibonacci Sequence If you meant the cl…

I stand to be corrected. Though I tried again just now and this is what Gemini Pro produced:

> I'm assuming you mean a Fibonacci sequence generator! I'll write a Python script that includes both an iterative and a recursive way to generate Fibonacci numbers.

... and then wrote some python code.

Re: Agent Skills

#154

Post by PleasureBot »

senko wrote: post #10

> This isn’t a coincidence. It’s the same SDLC every functioning engineering organisation runs, just in different vocabulary. [...] Amazon calls it the working-backwards memo and the bar raiser. Every healthy team has some version of this loop. This (sdlc == working backwards & bar raiser) is so horribly wrong, that I hope this was an LLM hallucination. In general, I'm starting to see these agent scaffolding systems…

All of these articles about setting up the perfect agent environments with skills, plugins, MCP servers, markdown files, etc. etc. reminds me so much of the culture around setting up the perfect "productivity stack". You need the perfect note-tacking app, ticketing app, calendar integrations, yada yada before you can really do anything meaningful. The reality is that you're going to get beat by someone with a few things written down on a piece of paper who is just getting stuff done.

Re: Agent Skills

#155

Post by robeym »

A far better approach is being precise with your prompts and if you find a new model has any bad habits, address it specifically in your AGENTS.md and go on your way. If you want to throw in slop promts, go ahead and add a massive AGENTS.md your employer gave you.

People waste too much time on this stuff. The next version could totally change how the model processes your agents.md.

Get good at promting, use agents.md as a minimal model annoyance fixer, and reset it often (every major release)

Re: Agent Skills

#156

Post by rglover »

thatmf wrote: post #48

Why are people so excited to put themselves out of a job? Not that these or any "skills" will do that, but just- in principle. This is like alienation from labor at scale.

Survival instincts. If everyone and everything around you (your job included) is shouting "use AI" it's difficult to take any stand or introduce caution. I think it's less about being excited, more about hoping to not miss the wave and get "left behind."

I think both groups (pro vs anti) will be a bit surprised when the long-term data shows productivity gains were modest on average and producing quality software still needs care/human attention, even with the support of advanced, frontier models. Same job as before, now we just have a power drill instead of a screwdriver. Some people build houses that stand for hundreds of years, others less so.

Re: Agent Skills

#157

Post by albedoa »

wg0 wrote: post #82
cortesoft wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you say is all possible, and in theory I agree with you. However, I have been using spec-kit (which is basically this style of AI usage) for the last few months and it has been AMAZING in practice. I am building really great things and have not run into any of the issues you are talking about as hypotheticals. Could they eventually happen? Sure, maybe. I am still cautious. But at some point once you have p…

We can build all the scaffolding around but I assure you that the LLMs aren't perfect rule following machines is the fundamental problem here and that would remain. Give it a few more months and I'm sure you'll see some of what I see if not all. I'm saying all the above having all sorts of systems tried and tested with AI leading me to say what I said.

> Give it a few more months

By that time, they will have realized immense value before seeing some of what you see. Sounds like an endorsement of spec-kit.

Re: Agent Skills

#158

Post by DeathArrow »

Things is we have an enormous amount of skill frameworks (this, GSD, spec-kit, superpowers, Compound Engineering etc) claiming to help with agentic coding.

And agents now got better builtin skills than they used to.

Who will have the time to A/B test all?

Re: Agent Skills

#159

Post by hansmayer »

vidarh wrote: post #136
hansmayer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Because certain aspects (both are error prone) are similar and comparable. The notion that two entities need to be close in abilities for it to be possible to compare them is nonsense. You make the point for me: We managed to put men on the moon despite humans being enormously unreliable and error prone, because we built system around them that allowed for harnessing the good bits and reducing the failures to accepta…

> We are - I am anyway - using our lessons from building reliable systems from unreliable elements to raise the reliability of outputs of LLMs the same way.

:) :) :) I could tell immediately you are somehow vested in the "success" of the LLM. So 600 B dollars and five years later, can you tell me how far did you guys get? Apollo programme costed a tiny fraction of that and started putting people on the moon some ~10 years later. Would you say that you are on the way to accomplish something similar in the next five years?

Re: Agent Skills

#160

Post by hansmayer »

teodosin wrote: post #133
hansmayer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Calm down. They were comparing a very specific and narrow aspect of both. Not totally equivalent maybe, but that doesn't justify a tantrum.

I am incredibly calm. I just wonder at the idiots who think they should compare the magnificiently efficient human brain to the shitslop machines.
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