--- schema: 1 type: video title: 'Building Great Agent Skills: The Missing Manual' description: >- Let's discuss how to navigate "skill hell" by providing a structured framework for building high-quality agent skills. Without a shared rubric, developers and organizations struggle to create effective, maintainable skills for AI agents. Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction to the talk and the concept of "skill hell" 2:12 - Overview of the skill checklist framework 3:16 - Trigger: Choosing between user-invoked and model-invoked skills 7:29 - Structure: Organizing steps and references 9:00 - Making the skill.md file minimal 11:54 - Steering: Using leading words to guide agent behavior 14:56 - Increasing "leg work" per step 16:48 - Pruning: Removing sediment, crud, and no-ops 19:06 - Final summary of the checklist framework 19:55 - Where to find the "writing great skills" resource The Skill Checklist Framework: Trigger (3:16 - 7:25): Decide whether a skill should be user-invoked or model-invoked. Matt notes that while model-invoked skills offer more flexibility, they increase context load and introduce unpredictability. User-invoked skills offer more control but require greater cognitive load from the pilot. Structure (7:29 - 11:53): Organize your skill into two primary units: steps (procedures) and reference (supporting information). To keep the skill.md file minimal, move branching reference material behind context pointers to reduce bloat and maintenance costs. Steering (11:54 - 16:47): Use leading words—specific terms that pack dense meaning—to influence agent behavior and guide reasoning traces. Additionally, you can force the agent to perform more "leg work" on specific tasks by breaking complex processes into smaller, individual skills that hide future steps. Pruning (16:48 - 19:05): Maintain a clean skill set by ensuring a single source of truth, removing "sediment" (irrelevant legacy material), and eliminating "no-ops" (instructions that don't actually change agent behavior). https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/productivity/writing-great-skills/SKILL.md --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/UNzCG3lw6O0-building-great-agent-skills Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- canonical: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/building-great-agent-skills-the-missing-manual-26939d720db0 markdown: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/video/building-great-agent-skills-the-missing-manual-26939d720db0.md llms: null parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md' channel: aidotengineer updated: '2026-10-24T08:50:29.206Z' language: null children: [] videoId: UNzCG3lw6O0 durationSeconds: 1243 publishedAt: '2026-06-29T18:53:10.000Z' searchChunks: - ordinal: 0 text: null startSeconds: 11 endSeconds: 142 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=11' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 1 text: null startSeconds: 11 endSeconds: 142 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=11' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 2 text: null startSeconds: 11 endSeconds: 142 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=11' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 3 text: null startSeconds: 152 endSeconds: 196 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=152' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 4 text: null startSeconds: 207 endSeconds: 457 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=207' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 5 text: null startSeconds: 207 endSeconds: 457 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=207' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 6 text: null startSeconds: 207 endSeconds: 457 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=207' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 7 text: null startSeconds: 468 endSeconds: 545 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=468' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 8 text: null startSeconds: 468 endSeconds: 545 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=468' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 9 text: null startSeconds: 555 endSeconds: 718 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=555' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 10 text: null startSeconds: 555 endSeconds: 718 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=555' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 11 text: null startSeconds: 555 endSeconds: 718 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=555' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 12 text: null startSeconds: 730 endSeconds: 900 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=730' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 13 text: null startSeconds: 730 endSeconds: 900 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=730' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 14 text: null startSeconds: 730 endSeconds: 900 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=730' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 15 text: null startSeconds: 912 endSeconds: 1016 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=912' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 16 text: null startSeconds: 912 endSeconds: 1016 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=912' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 17 text: null startSeconds: 1027 endSeconds: 1148 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=1027' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 18 text: null startSeconds: 1027 endSeconds: 1148 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=1027' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 19 text: null startSeconds: 1027 endSeconds: 1148 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=1027' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 20 text: null startSeconds: 1148 endSeconds: 1158 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/UNzCG3lw6O0?t=1148' heldReason: rights --- # Building Great Agent Skills: The Missing Manual Let's discuss how to navigate "skill hell" by providing a structured framework for building high-quality agent skills. Without a shared rubric, developers and organizations struggle to create effective, maintainable skills for AI agents. Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction to the talk and the concept of "skill hell" 2:12 - Overview of the skill checklist framework 3:16 - Trigger: Choosing between user-invoked and model-invoked skills 7:29 - Structure: Organizing steps and references 9:00 - Making the skill.md file minimal 11:54 - Steering: Using leading words to guide agent behavior 14:56 - Increasing "leg work" per step 16:48 - Pruning: Removing sediment, crud, and no-ops 19:06 - Final summary of the checklist framework 19:55 - Where to find the "writing great skills" resource The Skill Checklist Framework: Trigger (3:16 - 7:25): Decide whether a skill should be user-invoked or model-invoked. Matt notes that while model-invoked skills offer more flexibility, they increase context load and introduce unpredictability. User-invoked skills offer more control but require greater cognitive load from the pilot. Structure (7:29 - 11:53): Organize your skill into two primary units: steps (procedures) and reference (supporting information). To keep the skill.md file minimal, move branching reference material behind context pointers to reduce bloat and maintenance costs. Steering (11:54 - 16:47): Use leading words—specific terms that pack dense meaning—to influence agent behavior and guide reasoning traces. Additionally, you can force the agent to perform more "leg work" on specific tasks by breaking complex processes into smaller, individual skills that hide future steps. Pruning (16:48 - 19:05): Maintain a clean skill set by ensuring a single source of truth, removing "sediment" (irrelevant legacy material), and eliminating "no-ops" (instructions that don't actually change agent behavior). https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/productivity/writing-great-skills/SKILL.md --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/UNzCG3lw6O0-building-great-agent-skills Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/building-great-agent-skills-the-missing-manual-26939d720db0 · Channel: [AI Engineer](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md) > Search chunk text is held until public-source provenance is verified. ## Document chunks > Missing: no stored document chunks are available.