Nick Nisi

How I deleted 95% of my agent skills and got better results — Nick Nisi, WorkOS

May 30, 2026 · 17:43

Nick Nisi, DX engineer at WorkOS, argues that AI agents should be forced to prove their work with code rather than trusted with prompts. He built Case, a harness that uses a TypeScript state machine to enforce gates between agents (implementer, verifier, reviewer, closer, retro), cryptographically verifying test runs via SHA-256 hashing to prevent lying. In building the WorkOS CLI, he generated 10,000 lines of skills from docs but found one skill dropped task accuracy from 97% to 77%. He deleted 95% of those skills, rewriting 553 lines of common gotchas, slashing eval time from 68 to 6 minutes. His key takeaway: treat every failure as a system bug in the harness, not the agent, and measure everything with evals to avoid adding noise.

Full Walkthrough: Writing & Using Skills — Nick Nisi and Zack Proser

May 6, 2026 · 1:21:03

Zack Proser and Nick Nisi, Developer Experience Engineers at WorkOS, teach how to write portable, composable skills — single markdown files with optional scripts — that train AI tools like Claude, Codex, and Cursor to perform specific tasks consistently. They demonstrate building a repo roast skill that uses deterministic Git commands via script interpolation and progressive disclosure to load targeted references only when needed. The workshop covers structuring skills with front matter (name, description for LLM routing), adding confidence scoring and constraints to improve output, and sharing skills as .skill files or through marketplaces. Advanced topics include using skills in non-coding workflows (e.g., Slack–Linear automation) and composing skills in the WorkOS CLI, which uses the Claude Agent SDK to install auth. Attendees learn to iterate skills by reflecting on past conversations and leveraging Claude's built-in skill builder for evaluation.

[Workshop] AI Pipelines and Agents in Pure TypeScript with Mastra.ai — Nick Nisi, Zack Proser

Jul 12, 2025 · 1:51:14

This hands-on workshop introduces Mastra.ai, a TypeScript framework for building production AI agents and pipelines, and demonstrates how to build an AI meme generator using composable workflows, tools, and agents. Hosts Nick Nisi and Zack Proser walk through creating a multi-step workflow: extract user frustration, find a base meme via ImageFlip, generate captions, and publish the meme at a stable URL. They show how to chain steps with Zod schema validation for deterministic output, then wrap the workflow in an agent that accepts natural language requests. The workshop also covers MCP (Model Context Protocol) and a live demo of MCP.shop for ordering a shirt, emphasizing local iteration with Mastra's playground, built-in memory, and evaluation tools. Real-world patterns include building internal AI assistants for data cleaning, email drafting, and document summarization with minimal code.

Agents, Access, and the Future of Machine Identity — Nick Nisi (WorkOS) + Lizzie Siegle (Cloudflare)

Jun 30, 2025 · 14:17

Lizzie Siegle (Cloudflare) and Nick Nisi (WorkOS) argue that AI agents need the same authentication and authorization patterns as humans, extending OAuth to machines. They demonstrate an MCP server built with Cloudflare Workers and WorkOS that allows Claude to order a shirt on behalf of a user, showing how agents can act with user credentials. They explain using Cloudflare durable objects for per-user persistent storage and how authorization can be added to MCP servers to control agent actions, including an example where a 'pretty please' tool bypasses a block. The talk emphasizes the need for fine-grained authorization and audit trails as agents scale to thousands of tasks.