Claude Code and similar agents help me execute experiments, prototypes and full designs based on ideas that I have been refining in my head for years, but never had the time or resources to implement.
They also help get me past design paralysis driven by overthinking.
Perhaps the difference between acceleration and slop is the experience to know what to keep, what to throw away, and what to keep refining.
On the other hand, LLMs are trained on enormous collections of human-authored documents, many that look like "how to" documents. Perhaps the current generation of LLMs are naturally wired for skill-like human language instructions.
Skills are not just documentation. They include computability (programs/scripts), data (assets), and the documentation (resources) to use everything effectively.
Programs and data are the basis of deterministic results that are accessible to the llm.
Embedding an sqlite database with interesting information (bus schedules, dietary info, or a thousand other things) and a python program run by the skill can access it.
For Claude at least, it does it in a VM and can be used from your phone.
Sure, skills are more convention than a standard right now. Skills lack versioning, distribution, updates, unique naming, selective network access. But they are incredibly useful and accessible.
Am I missing something because what you describe as the pack of stuff sounds like S tier documentation. I get full working examples and a pre-populated database it works on?
It's protobuf/grpc based but uses json for serialization to make use of sqlite's json filtering functionality. However, it cannot be said to be zero-copy. It serializes binary protos into json and stores the binary protos directly for fast access, which allows you to skip deserialization when pulling out query results
Skills are not just markdown files. They are markdown files combined with code and data, which only work universally when you have a general purpose cloud-based code execution environment.
Out of the box Claude skills can call python scripts that load modules from Pypi or even GitHub, potentially ones that include data like sqlite files or parquet tables.
Not just in Claude Code. Anywhere, including the mobile app.
I have found that scripts, and the environment that runs them, are the skills' superpower.
Computability (scripts) means being able build documents, access remote data, retrieve data from packaged databases and a bunch of other fundamentally useful things, not just "code things". Computability makes up for many of the LLM's weaknesses and gives it autonomy to perform tasks independently.
On top of that, we can provide the documentation and examples in the skill that help the LLM execute computability effectively.
And if the LLM gets hung up on something while executing the skill, we can ask it why and then have it write better documentation or examples for a new skill version. So skills can self-improve.
It's still so early. We need better packaging, distribution, version control, sharing, composability.
But there's definitely something simple, elegant, and effective here.
Here is a reference to the "Reinventing Government" effort that was implemented during the Clinton administration and considered highly successful (and legal):
Yes, I am questioning whether the parent poster would have supported those cuts or uttered the same cry, as some individuals and communities were absolutely worse off after those cuts.
But it also expands the idea that the customer/buyer has financial power over the server by encouraging a tipping culture.
Donald Trump and his sons have repeatedly said that don't pay on contracts when they view the work is poorly done or insufficient, in response to claims of non-payment.
Encouraging tipping makes such "payment discretion" easier.
Claude Code and similar agents help me execute experiments, prototypes and full designs based on ideas that I have been refining in my head for years, but never had the time or resources to implement.
They also help get me past design paralysis driven by overthinking.
Perhaps the difference between acceleration and slop is the experience to know what to keep, what to throw away, and what to keep refining.