[JamesSwift]

Skills are the matrix scene where neo learns kungfu. Imagine they are a database of specialized knowledge that can an agent can instantly tap into _on demand_.

The key here is “on demand”. Not every agent or convention needs to know kung fu. But when they do, a skill is waiting to be consumed. This basic idea is “progressive disclosure” and it composes nicely to keep context windows focused. Eg i have a metabase skill to query analytics. Within that I conditionally refer to how to generate authentication if they arent authenticated. If they are authenticated, that information need not be consumed.

Some practical “skills”: writing tests, fetching sentry info, using playwright (a lot of local mcps are just flat out replaced by skills), submitting a PR according to team conventions (eg run lint, review code for X, title matches format, etc)

[aed]

Could you explain more about your metabase skill and how you use it? We use metabase (and generally love it) and I’m interested to hear about how other people are using it!

[JamesSwift]

Its really just some rules around auth, some precached lookups (eg databases with ids and which to use), and some explanations around models and where to find them. Everything else it pretty much knows on it own.

[wek]

Nice analogy!

[JamesSwift]

I cant claim credit. Im pretty sure Ive seen anthropic themselves use it in the original explainers