Comment by cortesoft
Isn't the difference that a skill means you just have to add the script name and explanation to the context instead of the entire script plus the explanation?
Isn't the difference that a skill means you just have to add the script name and explanation to the context instead of the entire script plus the explanation?
I like to think about it this way, you want to put some high level, table of contents, sparknotes like stuff in the system prompt. This helps warm up the right pathways. In this, you also need to inform that there are more things it may need, depending on "context", through filesystem traversal or search tools, the difference is unimportant, other than most things outside of coding typically don't do filesystem things the same way
It's a new technology under active development so people are simply sharing what works for them in the given moment.
> If these aren't signs of a bubble, I don't know what is.
This conclusion is incoherent and doesn't follow from any of your premises.
Sure it does. Many people are jumping on ideas and workflows proposed by influencer personalities and companies, without actually evaluating how valid or useful they actually are. TFA makes this clear by saying that they were "betting on skills" and only later determined that they get better performance from a different workflow.
This is very similar to speculative valuations around the web in the late 90s, except this bubble is far larger, more mainstream and personal.
The fact that this is a debate about which Markdown file to put prompt information in is wild. It ultimately all boils down to feeding context to the model, which hasn't fundamentally changed since 2022.
1. There is nothing novel in my text formats, I'm just deciding what content and what files
2. I've actually done these things, seen the difference, and share it with others
Yes there are a lot of unknowns and a lot of people speaking from ignorance, but it is a mistake, perhaps even bigotry by definition, to make such blanket statements and judgemental about people
Their non-skill based "compressed index" is just similarly "Each line maps a directory path to the doc files it contains" but without "skillification." They didn't load all those things into context directly, just pointers.
They also didn't bother with any more "explanation" beyond "here are paths for docs."
But this straightforward "here are paths for docs" produced better results, and IMO it makes sense since the more extra abstractions you add, the more chance of a given prompt + situational context not connecting with your desired skill.