Skills
What's the difference between an AI that answers questions and one that runs your workflow?
A skill packages a repeatable workflow into a single slash command. Instead of re-prompting the same instructions every session, you invoke /review-pr or /commit — the AI follows a predefined set of steps, quality gates, and output formats. One command. Consistent results.
How Skills Work
AI coding tools like Claude Code expose skills as slash commands. Each skill contains:
- Instructions — the steps the AI must follow
- Quality gates — what "done" looks like before the AI reports success
- Argument hints — what input the skill expects (a file path, a PR number, free text)
- Trigger phrases — natural language that activates the skill automatically
The pattern is composable. A publishing workflow might invoke /fix-links, then /review-pr, then /commit — all from a single /publish command. Small, correct skills chain into larger workflows.
The Market Pattern
Any instruction a team repeats more than three times is a candidate for a skill. The economic logic:
| Without skills | With skills |
|---|---|
| Re-prompt every session | One invocation per workflow |
| Inconsistent output | Gates enforce quality |
| Knowledge lives in one person | Skill is shareable across team |
| Slow onboarding | New hires invoke, not learn |
Skills shift AI from a question-answering tool to a workflow execution engine. The difference is whether judgment is embedded in the skill or re-applied every time.
Skill Maturity
Not all skills are equal. A maturity model applies:
| Level | Signal |
|---|---|
| L0 | Idea — exists as a repeated manual prompt |
| L1 | Defined — written down with steps and gates |
| L2 | Connected — invoked consistently across sessions |
| L3 | Tested — has caught at least one error via a gate |
| L4 | Proven — zero manual interventions, measurable improvement |
L4 skills are institutional knowledge, encoded. They outlast any individual contributor.
Context
- Prompts — the building blocks skills are made from
- Autonomous Agents — when tasks need agents, not skills
- Coding Tools — where skills run
- Standards — the AAIF skill specification
Questions
What's the highest-value repeatable workflow in your current work that hasn't been packaged as a skill yet?
- How do you decide when a workflow is stable enough to package as a skill versus keeping it as an improvised prompt?
- What's the difference between a skill that saves time and one that just moves the work somewhere else?
- If L4 skills encode institutional knowledge — what happens to that knowledge when an AI tool is deprecated?