Discussion Ask HN: I still don't understand why AI agents need "skills" I’ve asked AI a few times and I still don’t get it.Why do frameworks like Claude Code or Codex have the concept of “skills” instead of just using well-organized Markdown docs?Couldn’t I just have an AGENTS.md that points to folders of .md files and tells the agent when to read them? That feels functionally equivalent to me.What am I missing? Is there a real architectural benefit, or is it mostly a standardization/convenience thing?I doubt we’d create so much hype about skills if they’d just be a md file that’s in a skills folder. So I feel I’m missing something. 17 points skeptic_ai 3 months ago 18 comments
Why do frameworks like Claude Code or Codex have the concept of “skills” instead of just using well-organized Markdown docs?
Couldn’t I just have an AGENTS.md that points to folders of .md files and tells the agent when to read them? That feels functionally equivalent to me.
What am I missing? Is there a real architectural benefit, or is it mostly a standardization/convenience thing?
I doubt we’d create so much hype about skills if they’d just be a md file that’s in a skills folder. So I feel I’m missing something.