Skills are the New SDKs - Elvin Aghammadzada, DataRobot
Jul 20, 2026 · 26:40
Elvin Aghammadzada of DataRobot argues that enterprise AI platforms must become 'teachable' through a skill layer—versioned, task-specific packages that encode operational knowledge for coding agents. He contends that context windows degrade after 25% usage (a phenomenon called 'context rot'), making progressive disclosure via skills critical for maintaining agent performance. Skills expose only metadata (<100 tokens) until activated, while MCP servers handle heavy resource isolation; skills can also self-modify and spawn MCP servers. With 26+ platforms (Claude Code, Codex, Copilot) supporting skills and 85,000+ published, the ecosystem is creating a 'fluency moat' where platform value compounds with each skill. However, LLM-generated skills currently hurt performance, and marketplaces lack verification controls, echoing early NPM risks. The episode positions skills as complementing MCPs, not replacing them, and urges versioning and testing as software.
