Building Great Agent Skills: The Missing Manual
Jun 29, 2026 · 20:43
Matt Pocock presents a 'skill checklist' framework to help developers escape 'skill hell' by systematically evaluating and improving agent skills, covering trigger, structure, steering, and pruning. He explains the trade-offs between user-invoked and model-invoked skills: model-invoked increase context load and unpredictability, user-invoked increase pilot cognitive load. Structure divides skills into steps and reference, with branching material hidden behind context pointers to minimize skill.md. Steering uses 'leading words' like 'vertical slice' that appear in reasoning traces; to boost leg work, he splits skills so agents only see one step at a time. Pruning removes duplication, sediment, and no-ops that don't affect behavior. The framework is in the 'writing-great-skills' skill in his repository.
