I’ve seen people on X dunking on folks like @garrytan @doodlestein and others for sharing SKILL dot md files they've built. They are dismissing these files as "just a markdown file.” I think this misses the point entirely and I'll try to address that here. Quick thread: A bad skill file is just text, sure. A good skill file is compressed expertise, packaged in a format an agent can actually use. The value is not just in the “markdown file.” The value is the interaction between: a huge neural network with latent capabilities a precise, reusable, agent-readable procedure that steers those capabilities toward a specific outcome That combination is the product. Saying “it’s just markdown” is like saying Hamlet is “just ink on paper,” or Einstein’s relativity paper was “just a text.” Technically true. Intellectually useless. The medium is simple. The content is what matters. And more importantly, the effect of that content on the reader is what matters. With humans, a book, a coach, a lecture, or painting can change how someone thinks and acts. With LLMs, text is also the control surface. These models were trained on text, reason through text, call tools through text, and follow procedures through text. So yes, the skill is “just text.” But it is text designed to be read by an enormous neural net. That matters. A good skill is agent-ergonomic. It does not merely say “do this better.” It encodes workflow, constraints, examples, edge cases, tool usage, failure modes, and success criteria in a way the agent can reliably execute. That is very different from a casual prompt. A prompt is often a one-off request. A skill can be reused, versioned, tested, improved, shared, and loaded at the exact moment an agent needs it. That turns “vibes-based prompting” into something closer to operational knowledge. Another way to think about it: We have built these massive models, but much of their power is latent. Different people can extract very different levels of performance from the same model. A good skill is a way to actualize a specific slice of that latent capability. A refactoring skill. A research skill. A legal review skill. A math explanation skill. A codebase-navigation skill. Each one can make the same model behave very differently. I think of Cus D’Amato and Mike Tyson. Tyson had enormous latent potential. But Cus gave him a system, a style, a discipline, a way to channel that potential. That’s what good skills are for agents. They are not magic. They are not all equally valuable. Many will be mediocre or useless. But dismissing them right off the batt because they are “just markdown” shows a misunderstanding of what LLMs are. Text is how we trained these systems. (for the most part) Text is how we steer them. Text is how we unlock parts of what they can do. The question is not whether a skill file is “just text.” The question is whether the text reliably makes the model perform better at a valuable task. If yes, then it is not “just markdown.” It is leverage.