7 articles
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Start with the boring chore
Anyone who wants to automate usually thinks of the biggest process right away. I would start with the small tasks that you do the exact same way every time.
When we get to building skills in a training session, I always ask what people would like to automate. And then I almost always get the same kind of answer. Someone names the biggest process in their job. The work they have dreamed of for years that would one day happen by itself. Usually, that is also the work that involves the most thinking.
I understand that. Yet I always say the same thing: put that out of your mind for a moment. You do not start there. Look at the low hanging fruit first, the little things you do again every week.
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You do not have to write out your skill yourself
Building a skill sounds like a lot of writing. Today I leave that to my AI. Four ways to let your AI create a skill, including by demonstrating it.
When I started with skills, I wrote them out completely myself. Every step, every exception, in a Markdown file. I actually do not do that anymore. You just ask ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot to write a skill, and it knows how to do that. A folder with a lowercase name, a SKILL.md file in it, the right description at the top. Your AI handles that itself.
What you still do yourself is tell your AI what the skill has to do. And there are different ways to do that. This week I put them side by side in a training, because many people think there is only one.
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Not every workflow is a chain
Before I build a skill or an agent, I look at the shape of my work. A chain, a branch, a nest or a diamond, and what that changes.
When I ask people to describe a workflow, I almost always get a list. First I do this, then that, and then that. That is just how we think. This week I saw it again in a training, when we started building skills. Everyone wrote their steps neatly below each other.
That is actually a good start. But a lot of work does not run in a straight line. And when you see the shape of your work, you also know better what to ask your AI. So in that training I showed a few shapes, with examples from my own work.
At the bottom of this article is a prompt you can copy to see the shape of your own work.
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Do not just download a skill from the internet
A skill is a folder, and it can contain more than just text. This is how I let my agent look at an interesting skill first and make its own version of it.
In a workshop on vibe coding this week, someone asked what a skill actually is. I thought I had already explained it. But I give so many training sessions that I was not sure myself anymore. So I just explained it again. A skill is a step by step description of how an agent should do a task. You can see it as a fixed way of working, in plain human language.
And then the next question usually follows immediately. There are thousands of skills online, and someone asked if you cannot just download them. I stay away from those myself. And I would like to explain why.
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Fewer agents, more skills
I used to build a separate agent for every task, until I no longer knew who did what. Now I work with a few agents that share skills.
In a workshop about agents I got a question that took me a long time to figure out myself. One agent can have multiple skills. Why not just build multiple agents that can each do one thing well? That seemed a lot clearer to that person.
That is actually how we did it too, about eight months ago. We built a separate agent for every task. One for translations, one for newsletters, one for quotes, one for reports. Each with its own instructions and its own conversations. That felt very organised in the beginning.
At the bottom of this article is a prompt that helps you tidy up your own agents, which you can just copy.
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Create your skill at the end of the chat
Not every task needs a skill. I would create one for work you do often, and only at the end of a good chat.
Should I create a skill to choose a new washing machine? I get that question in some shape or form in almost every workshop. Since everyone knows what skills are, it keeps coming back. And my counter question is always the same: how many washing machines are you going to buy? Maybe one every ten years, if things go well. So I would not create a skill for that.
For the tasks where it does pay off, you will find the question I ask at the bottom of this article.
The washing machine test
A skill is a fixed method that your AI can call upon. It contains the steps, the quality criteria, the tone and the format. You write it once. And after that, your AI follows the same path every time. That is where its value lies, and also its limit.
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Skills or flows: when plain language is the wrong format
Describing a work process in plain language for an agent is flexible, but not always smart. When it is better to build a fixed workflow, and how to spot the difference.
One of the most beautiful things about working with AI agents is that you can describe processes in plain language. You write down how you do something, step by step, and the agent follows it. Such a description is called a skill in many tools. But in my workshops I also warn people: not every process belongs in plain language.
At the bottom of this article is a prompt that helps you figure that out for your own process.
What a skill is
A skill is essentially a description of a work process. A standard operating procedure, written in Markdown, that an agent reads and executes. For example: if someone wants an appointment, ask for their name, date and location, check the calendar to see if it fits, suggest an alternative if it does not fit, and send the invitation after agreement.
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