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There’s a Skill for That

There’s a Skill for That

There’s a skill for that is going to become a real way work gets done.

If you are not sure what a skill file is yet, read Claude’s explanation of what skills are first.

I do not think skill files are just prompts. I think they are becoming a new way to package expertise and outsource labor into AI agents. Not all labor. Not the deepest version of the work. But the first pass. The entry-level version. The research-heavy version. The part of the task where you usually need someone who already knows the process.

For a long time, if you did not know how to do something, you would either learn it yourself, hire somebody, or go to Fiverr and pay for the first version of it.

Now there is another option.

You can get the skill file.

What Changed My Mind

When skills first came out, I did not immediately understand why people were making a big deal about them.

I had already been using commands, workflows, rules, and instruction files inside coding agents. I had been using tools like Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and other agentic coding environments for a while. So when I saw skills, my first thought was simple: is this really that different?

In coding, we already had this idea. You could write a command. You could create a workflow. You could tell the agent how your project works, how you like code written, what files to look at, and what patterns to follow.

But the difference with skills is the level of abstraction.

Commands and workflows felt mostly attached to coding agents. Skills are being presented as something broader. They are not only for writing code. They can be used for sales, customer research, go-to-market, design, copywriting, positioning, product strategy, and almost any domain where someone has a repeatable process.

That is what changed my mind.

The moment this clicked for me was when I started using specific ICP and go-to-market skills.

I am a developer and a product person. I can think through what should be built. I can reason about who a product might serve. I can help identify the shape of a market and where a product might fit.

But the specific sales tactics and go-to-market execution are not naturally my core lane. Building lead lists, writing the first cold email, figuring out the right ICP, mapping the buying process, and doing all the small research tasks that a go-to-market person would do is a different type of work.

After using those skills, I realized I was not just using a prompt.

I was borrowing somebody else’s process.

What Is a Skill File?

A skill file is a reusable set of instructions, examples, constraints, and process notes that teaches an AI agent how to perform a specific task.

That sounds simple, but it is deeper than it looks.

A prompt is usually temporary. You write it once, get an output, and move on. A skill is more like a stored way of thinking. It tells the agent what matters, what to ignore, what good looks like, and how to move through the work.

Skills can also include code, templates, scripts, and project structure. That is another reason they are different from normal prompts. A skill file can teach the agent the process, but it can also give the agent the tools to execute the process.

A good skill file does not just say, “write me a cold email.”

It says how to research the person, how to frame the problem, how to avoid sounding generic, what kind of opening line works, what tone to use, what length is too long, and what the final output should look like.

That is not just instruction.

That is judgment being packaged.

Skills As Labor Leverage

This is where the labor market part comes in.

Skills are a new form of labor leverage for entry-level and zero-to-one tasks. They let you take the process of someone who is an expert, subject matter expert, or professional, and generate the first version of what they might have created for you.

That matters because the early stage of building anything is full of tasks that are important, but not always worth hiring a full person for.

If you are building a new product, you may need customer research. You may need a basic marketing plan. You may need landing page copy. You may need cold emails. You may need competitive research. You may need an MVP scope. You may need to understand who you are selling to.

In the past, you might have outsourced some of that work.

Now the question becomes: what is the best skill file for this task?

The skill file becomes the expert process layer. The AI agent becomes the execution layer. You become the person directing, reviewing, and deciding what is useful.

This does not mean you no longer need experts. That would be too simple of a claim.

What it means is that a lot of first drafts, first passes, and entry-level versions of knowledge work can now be created through a skill file instead of a freelancer.

The Fiverr Comparison

Fiverr is a marketplace for outsourced tasks.

You need a lead list, you go to Fiverr. You need some basic research, you go to Fiverr. You need a simple landing page draft, you go to Fiverr. You need someone to write the first email sequence, you go to Fiverr.

But if the task is mostly process-driven, and if the quality of the output depends on having the right instructions, then a skill file starts to compete with that behavior.

Instead of paying $50 for one person to do one version of the task, maybe you pay $10 for a reusable skill file and run it through your agent as many times as you need.

That is a different type of leverage.

You are not just buying the output. You are buying the process that creates the output.

Especially when you are going from zero to one, that matters. You usually do not know exactly what you need yet. You are exploring. You are testing ideas. You are trying to see if there is something there.

For that type of work, the skill file can replace the cost of asking someone on Fiverr to get you started.

The Expert Opportunity

This is also an opportunity for experts.

If you are really good at a specific type of work, you should be thinking about how to turn that process into a skill file.

If someone like Kela Ivonye is great at sales, outreach, or getting the first email to land, that should become a skill file. Not just a course. Not just a post. Not just a video explaining how to do it.

A skill file.

Something I can give to my AI agent so it can work through the task with your process.

The same thing is true for designers, developers, product marketers, researchers, writers, operators, and creators. If you have taste, judgment, and a repeatable way of doing something, there is a world where that becomes a product.

There could be a “write cold emails like me” skill.

There could be a “design like me” skill.

There could be a “build like me” skill.

There could be a “research this market like me” skill.

This is why examples like Rams and Impeccable are interesting to me. They point toward a future where taste, expertise, and process become more portable. Not just as content people consume, but as instructions agents can execute.

YouTube Scaled Explanation, Skills Scale Execution

YouTube changed how people learned from experts.

Before YouTube, if you wanted to learn from a specific person, you needed access to them, their class, their book, their course, or their environment. YouTube made it possible for someone to explain their process once and have millions of people learn from it.

That scaled explanation.

Courses scaled education.

Templates scaled structure.

Skill files scale execution.

That is the difference.

A YouTube video can show me how you think. A course can teach me the framework. A template can give me the structure. But a skill file can let my agent work through the task using your process.

That is a different relationship between expertise and software.

The execution layer now lives inside the AI agent. So the skill file becomes an extension of the expert. It is not the full person. It is not their full judgment. But it is a packaged version of how they approach a task.

That is powerful.

Trust And Marketplaces

The problem is trust.

Anybody can write a skill file. That does not mean the skill is good.

Some skill files will just be generic prompts with better packaging. Some will sound smart but create shallow work. Some will work in one context and fail in another. Some will not be maintained as tools change.

This is where the marketplace opportunity becomes obvious.

People are going to need reviews. They are going to need examples. They are going to need before and after outputs. They are going to need to know who wrote the skill and whether that person is actually good at the thing they are teaching the agent to do.

The future skill marketplace is not just a prompt marketplace.

It is closer to a marketplace for packaged labor process.

The best skills will probably have expert profiles, version history, examples, ratings, and proof that the skill works across different people and different contexts.

Because if I am going to buy a skill file from you, I need to know that your process actually creates value.

Personal Proof Point: IdeaBrowser

Recently, I paid for access to IdeaBrowser and their set of skills.

I paid $99 for a seven-day trial. That is not nothing. But it was worth it because of the skills and agentic workflows they provided. Those workflows helped me validate project ideas I was thinking about.

That is what made this feel real.

I was not just paying for a dashboard. I was paying for a set of skills and workflows created by people who understand idea validation, markets, and startup research better than I do in that specific domain.

That is the point.

When the skill file is written by someone with domain expertise, it gives me access to a first version of that expertise. I can run it. I can review it. I can push back on it. I can use it to think better.

For a builder, that is valuable.

Examples I’m Watching

Concerns

There are obvious concerns.

Bad skill files will create bad work. Generic skill files will create generic outputs. A lot of people will probably package basic prompts and call them skills.

Also, some work still needs real human judgment. If the stakes are high, you should not blindly trust an agent just because it has a skill file. You still need to review the work. You still need to understand the context. You still need to know when the output is wrong.

But that does not remove the value.

Most useful tools have this same problem. The low-quality versions flood the market first. Then trust, reputation, reviews, and proof start to matter.

What This Means

Skills sit in a strange but important place.

They are somewhere between a course, a template, a freelancer, a consultant, and a software product.

They teach, but they also execute. They explain, but they also generate. They package knowledge, but they also plug that knowledge into an agent that can do the work.

For builders, this changes the cost of starting.

Instead of asking, “Who can I hire to do this?” the first question may become, “Is there a skill for this?”

Instead of paying for the first version of the task, you may buy the best process for creating that first version.

And for experts, this creates a new product surface. If you have a repeatable way of creating value, you can turn that into a skill file. You can give other people access to your process without being present for every task.

There’s a skill for that is going to become more than a phrase.

It is going to become one of the ways work gets done.

For how skills plug into coding-agent environments alongside MCP, terminal work, and repo memory, see Coding Agents as the Serious-Work Stack.