alt Hacker NewsSkills in CC have been a bit frustrating for me. They don't trigger reliably and the emphasis on "it's just markdown" makes it harder to have them reliably call certain tools with the correct arguments.
The idea that agent harnesses should primarily have their functionality dictated by plaintext commands feels like a copout around programming in some actually useful, semi-opinionated functionality (not to mention that it makes capability-discoverability basically impossible). For example, Claude Code has three modes: plan, ask about edits, and auto-accept edits. I always start with a plan and then I end up with multiple tasks. I'd like to auto-accept edits for a step at a time and the only way to do that reliably is to ask CC to do that, but it's not reliable—sometimes it just continues to go into the next step. If this were programmed explicitly into CC rather than relying on agent obedience, we could ditch the nondeterminism and just have a hook on task completion that toggles auto-complete back to "off."
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> idea that agent harnesses should primarily have their functionality dictated by plaintext commands feels like a copout
I think it's more along the lines of acknowledging the fast-paced changes in the field, and refusing to cast into code something that's likely to rapidly evolve in the near future.
Once things settle down into tested practices, we'll see more "permanent" instrumentation arise.
You can publish scripts with skills you author, right? With carefully constructed markdown that should allow the agent to call tools the right way.
> sometimes it just continues to go into the next step
Use a structured workflow that loops on every task and includes a pause for user confirmation at the end. Enforce it with a hook. I'm not sure if you can toggle auto-accept this way, but I think the end result is what you're asking for.
I use this with great success, sometimes toggling auto-accept on when confidence is high that Claude can complete a step without guidance, and toggling off when confidence is low and you want to slow down and steer, with Claude stopping between the steps. Now that prompt suggestions are a thing, you can just hit enter to continue on the suggested prompt to continue.
Are you using either CLAUDE.md or .claude/INSTRUCTIONS.md to direct Claude about the different agents?
Also, be aware that when you add new instructions if you don't tell claude to reread these files, it will NOT have it in its context window until you tell it to read them OR you make a new CC session. This was a bit frustrating for me because it was not immediately obvious.
https://scottspence.com/posts/measuring-claude-code-skill-ac... works very well
I think unless you're doing simple tasks, skills are unreliable. For better reliability, I have the agent trigger APIs that handles the complex logic (and its own LLM calls) internally. Has anyone found a solid strategy for making complex 'skills' more dependable?
You can write skills that have an associated js/python/whatever script.
> Skills in CC have been a bit frustrating for me. They don't trigger reliably
Referencing them in AGENTS/CLAUDE.md has increased their usage for me.
The saving grace of Claude Code skills is that when writing them yourself, you can give them frontmatter like "use when mentioning X" that makes them become relevant for very specific "shibboleths" - which you can then use when prompting.
Are we at an ideal balance where Claude Code is pulling things in proactively enough... without bringing in irrelevant skills just because the "vibes" might match in frontmatter? Arguably not. But it's still a powerful system.