I Still Don't Understand Why AI Agents Need Skills — Here's the Real Answer
AI agents need skills because a single monolithic instruction file like AGENTS.md forces the entire knowledge base into the agent’s context window on every interaction, degrading performance, increasing cost, and reducing accuracy. Skills solve this by using progressive disclosure — the agent sees only a skill’s name and description upfront, and loads the full instructions only when it decides the skill is relevant. This architectural pattern, borrowed from how human experts organize knowledge, is the difference between handing someone a 500-page manual and letting them ask for the chapter they need. ...