Ask HN: I still don't understand why AI agents need "skills"

I’ve asked AI a few times and I still don’t get it.

Why do frameworks like Claude Code or Codex have the concept of “skills” instead of just using well-organized Markdown docs?

Couldn’t I just have an AGENTS.md that points to folders of .md files and tells the agent when to read them? That feels functionally equivalent to me.

What am I missing? Is there a real architectural benefit, or is it mostly a standardization/convenience thing?

I doubt we’d create so much hype about skills if they’d just be a md file that’s in a skills folder. So I feel I’m missing something.

8 points | by skeptic_ai 5 hours ago

7 comments

  • infotainment 4 hours ago
    > Why do frameworks like Claude Code or Codex have the concept of “skills” instead of just using well-organized Markdown docs?

    "Well-organized markdown docs" are exactly what skills are.

    More specifically, they are well-organized markdown docs that explain how to do some particular thing.

    [-]
    • getstowly 4 hours ago
      This. Skills are exactly that, well structured markdown documents. Its the same with AI agents. You define the structure, what it can and can't do, setup rules and guidelines and then the AI sticks to that exact model. I sell skills on marketplace because sometimes, crafting the perfect prompt can be hard - you want something specific and very particular and don't know how to ask AI to do that. This is where skills come in. You can create your own skills or get them from someone else. They're great.
      [-]
      • kian 1 hour ago
        how much do you make selling skills on marketplace, just curious? It seems like it'd be impossible to vet a skill without reading it, so the entire concept mystifies me just a little bit.
        [-]
        • getstowly 1 hour ago
          Usually only charge a few bucks because honestly, anyone can make them but those that buy get them because they don't want to spend the time on making them. You can sell them for $10 or $15, maybe more depending on the skill. Not always a lot but if you have a ton of them, you can make some serious cash.
  • nijave 4 hours ago
    To add to what the other person said, they're also loaded differently than arbitrary docs.

    They're presented as a list of titles and descriptions to the LLM and it can pick which ones seem relevant and load them.

    Markdown docs the LLM needs to make a tool call to read the files and potentially multiple tool calls to discover data if there's a hierarchy. Additionally, it now has to decide if it should read the entire file or cherry pick parts of it.

    Skills organize that in an atomic and composable way.

    I think ChatGPT and Claude skills will also package arbitrary artifacts like scripts as well. Not sure if that's standard or not

  • bediger4000 2 hours ago
    Aren't "skills" just some words and syntax that tokenize in a fashion that gets an instance of an LLM primed for (you hope) the right thing statistically?

    After that, I think "skill" is just a good name. It sounds more "AI" than a "spell" or "incantation", which would sound magical and esoteric.

  • gutomec 1 minute ago
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  • argszero 3 hours ago
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  • clipforge 3 hours ago
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  • catlover76 4 hours ago
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