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Skills: Teaching AI How to Think
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Lazy-loaded expertise for efficient, reliable agents
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The Problem
===
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You have two bad options:

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**Option A: Stuff everything into the system prompt**
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- 🪣 20,000+ tokens of instructions, always loaded
- 🔇 Context pollution degrades *all* tasks
- 💸 You pay for expertise you're not using

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**Option B: Wing it**
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- 🎲 Agent improvises on critical tasks
- 🔀 Inconsistent results every time
- 😬 "Creative" solutions in production

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Neither is acceptable.
===

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What is a Skill?
===
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```mermaid +render +width:100%
graph TD
    S["🎯 Skill"] --> MD["📋 SKILL.md<br/>Instructions, rules, edge cases"]
    S --> SC["⚙️ scripts/<br/>Helper scripts"]
    S --> TM["📄 templates/<br/>Output templates"]
    S --> AS["📦 assets/<br/>Supporting files"]
    
    style MD fill:#4a9eff,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style S fill:#ff6b6b,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style SC fill:#51cf66,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style TM fill:#51cf66,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style AS fill:#51cf66,stroke:#333,color:#fff
```

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**SKILL.md is the brain. Everything else is optional.**

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Lazy Loading
===
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How it works: scan descriptions → load on demand → unload when done

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```mermaid +render +width:100%
graph LR
    subgraph BEFORE["❌ Without Skills"]
        direction TB
        BP["System Prompt<br/>20,000+ tokens"]
        BP --> W1["Weather SOPs"]
        BP --> W2["Security SOPs"]
        BP --> W3["Deploy SOPs"]
        BP --> W4["Testing SOPs"]
        BP --> W5["... everything else"]
    end

    subgraph AFTER["✅ With Skills"]
        direction TB
        AP["System Prompt<br/>~500 tokens<br/>(descriptions only)"]
        AP -->|"task matches"| L1["Load: Weather<br/>+2,000 tokens"]
    end

    style BEFORE fill:#ffcccc,stroke:#cc0000
    style AFTER fill:#ccffcc,stroke:#00cc00
    style BP fill:#ff6b6b,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style AP fill:#51cf66,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style L1 fill:#4a9eff,stroke:#333,color:#fff
```

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**10 skills × 2,000 tokens = 20,000 always loaded → ~500 base + 2,000 on demand**


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SOPs = Reliability
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The SKILL.md **is** the standard operating procedure.

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**Without Skill** 🎲
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> "Check if my server is secure"
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- Runs random checks from training data
- Misses half the important ones  
- Suggests changes that conflict with your infra

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**With Skill** 📋
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> "Check if my server is secure"
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- Loads healthcheck SKILL.md
- Follows structured audit checklist
- Firewall → SSH → Updates → Services
- Prioritised report with specific fixes

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**Runbook vs. "figure it out"**


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Skills vs. Tools vs. System Prompts
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| Layer | Answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| **Tools** | What *can* I do? | Read files, search web, send messages |
| **System Prompt** | Who *am* I? | Helpful, concise, safety-conscious |
| **Skills** | *How* do I do X well? | Step-by-step server security audit |

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```mermaid +render +width:100%
graph LR
    T["🔧 Tools<br/>Capability"] --> A["🤖 Agent"]
    SP["🧠 System Prompt<br/>Identity"] --> A
    SK["🎯 Skills<br/>Expertise"] --> A
    
    style T fill:#ff6b6b,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style SP fill:#ffd93d,stroke:#333,color:#000
    style SK fill:#4a9eff,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style A fill:#51cf66,stroke:#333,color:#fff
```

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Tools without skills = workshop full of power tools, no training

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Real-World Examples
===
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* **Weather Skill** ☀️ — Simple. ~50 lines. Query APIs, format forecasts, handle locations. Loaded when someone asks "what's the weather?"
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* **Healthcheck Skill** 🔒 — Structured security audit playbook. Firewall, SSH, updates, service exposure. Prioritised findings with specific remediations.
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* **SecureTransport Flow Engineering** 🔐 — Deep domain expertise. File transfer flows, PGP encryption, SFTP patterns, error log locations, testing harnesses. Months of tribal knowledge, instantly available.
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* **Skill Creator** 🏗️ — A meta-skill: a skill for *building skills*. Encodes the structure, best practices, and packaging conventions.


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The Bigger Picture
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**Expertise Preservation** 🧠
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- Skills capture tribal knowledge
- Your best engineer writes it once
- Every agent benefits, forever
- People leave. Skills persist.

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**Composability** 🧩
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- Modular: share, version, stack
- Discoverable skill catalogues  
- ClawHub: a marketplace of expertise
- Community flywheel: solve → share → improve

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```mermaid +render +width:100%
graph LR
    E["👩‍💻 Expert writes skill"] --> P["📦 Published to ClawHub"]
    P --> U["🤖 Agents everywhere use it"]
    U --> F["🔄 Community improves it"]
    F --> P
    
    style E fill:#ff6b6b,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style P fill:#4a9eff,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style U fill:#51cf66,stroke:#333,color:#fff
    style F fill:#ffd93d,stroke:#333,color:#000
```


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Skills = Efficiency + Reliability
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Load expertise on demand. Follow SOPs, not guesswork.

Capture knowledge. Scale it. Share it.

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🎯
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