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Building AI Agents (Clearly Explained)

35m 25s

Building AI Agents (Clearly Explained)

The discussion emphasizes that while modern AI models are powerful, effective use requires proper context management. Most users unnecessarily overload agents with extensive configuration files, which consume tokens and reduce efficiency. Instead, the recommended approach is to utilize "skills"—modular instructions that are only loaded when needed. The optimal method for creating skills is to first manually guide the AI through a task, providing step-by-step feedback to establish a successful workflow. After this experiential learning, the AI can review its actions and generate a tailored skill file. This process mirrors training a new employee and ensures the agent understands specific requirements. The speaker advises against using pre-made skills from marketplaces due to a lack of contextual relevance and potential security issues. Ultimately, productivity scales by building custom skills through hands-on collaboration with the AI, treating it as a trainable assistant rather than a magical solution.

Transcription

6773 Words, 35759 Characters

English
Ross Mike, welcome back to the pod. By the end of this episode, what are people going to learn? I hope I'm going to share some wisdom on how you can use the agents better. There's a lot of information going on right now. I disagree with most of it. And that's what we're going to talk about. So at the end, whether you're building something using an agent for some sort of work, you have the best output possible. And is this going to be a technical dive or, you know, non-technical person can. Anyone can watch this. There's going to be a lot of diagrams. That's all. You're going to make it clear to understand the concepts, right? Easy. OK. Let's go. So. The starter by this focus. It's different time, baby. The first thing that I want to announce, previous episodes, we probably disagree with this point, but now what's true is the models are good. The models are exceptionally good. Opus 4.6 is amazing. GPT 5.4 is amazing. I know there's like two sets of campwear, especially when it comes to programming. People are like, "Oh, opus is the better UI designer. GPT 5.4 is the better backend." Generally speaking, we've reached a point. We're not at AGI yet. We've reached a point where the models are good. But context still matters. And you have the power to steer the models in a direction where you can get quality or you can get slop. And that's what I really want to talk about. But before we get into all that, I feel free to cut me off because this topic excites me. We need to learn how context works. And context is the model assembling information that it needs to execute an action. And the way the context is assembled, let's say in a coding agent, but really in any sort of agent is there's this general system prompt, usually by the model provider. So for example, Cloud Code leaked recently. And one of the cool things that, especially as a developer, I got to do this. I got to read the system prompt. So they have this general system prompt that guides the model on how to act, what to do, what not to do. The system prompt is very important. And then you have a lot of people have agent.md files or cloud.md files. And I'm just going to say off rip, 95% of people don't need this. The reason being is, again, you have to assume that the models are already good. Right? Imagine I told you Greg, every time we're about to shoot a podcast, Greg, you need a microphone. You know you need a microphone, right? You've done this plenty of times, right? So if I'm building like, let's say a website with Cloud Code, and I'm telling Cloud Code, this code base uses React. I don't need to because it has the code base in context. It can check the code, right? So there is this disparity where a lot of people are putting a lot of onus on the harness and the context building. And I'm low key starting to strip things off. Like I'm going super, super minimal because again, not to sound like a anthropic or open AI shell. Unfortunately, I have not been acquired. None of them are paying me. But the models are really, really good. Wait, so 95% of the time I don't even need a bother with an agent md file. You don't. Like unless this is some sort of proprietary information. Yeah, what is the 5% of time I should care about it? proprietary information that like maybe specific to your company or some methodology that is specific to you that has to be referenced in every single conversation. Because the annoying part with an agent.md file is every time you go back and forth with the agent, it's added in the context, right? The cool thing about skills, and I'm going to talk about skills in a second, the way skills are designed, the skills are used in a way that's called progressive disclosure, meaning when you have a skill file, the entire thing is an added to context. It's just the title and the description. So the agent has the title and description in the context. And when you let's say you have a notion report skill, right, and you tell your agent, hey, I want you to create a notion report. It's then going to check its context and be like, oh, I have this skill. Let me check out the entire document. So it's not in the context. What's in the context is the name and the description. But that's enough for the agent to be like, oh, this is a skill I need. Let me go use it, which is fantastic. I'm a skills maxi and I'm going to show later in the episode, like how you craft the perfect skills. So with agent.md and claw.md files, its context being added at every turn, right? So let's say you have like a thousand line file claw.md and let's say that's like 7,000 tokens. You're spending 7,000 tokens on every run. Now do you need to, most likely not, it probably should be a skill. But if you have some sort of company proprietary information or like there's something specific that you do that the model needs to know at every single turn, then you use it. The thing is 95% of people don't have that, right? So I'm not a fan unless that's the case. So and the reason being is we're wasting tokens, right? It's in every single turn. This is where the beauty of skills come. I'll show my screen here. Your skill, again, this is not like word for word how it looks, but a skill basically looks like this. There is a name. There is a description. And then underneath is a bunch of information. I'm going to put a bunch of info. What when you create a skill.md file, what gets added into the context is actually just the name in the description, right? The bunch of info doesn't get added. So imagine you have two sentences versus an agent on an empty that has like a thousand lines that get added into the context. We're talking thousands of tokens compared to a couple hundred. And the agent only gets the bunch of info when it realizes it needs this skill. So if I have, let's say, a certain way of generating a report, a certain way of structuring my code, why would I put that in the agent on empty file when I can have the agent call on it progressively when it needs it, right? So this is why skills are honestly like I'm a shill, I'm a maxi, but people do it wrong and I'm going to share the right way on how do we create skills. So far we have the system prompt, the agent.md, the skills, and then we have the tools, right? So if you're using Cloud Code, there's already built-in tools, a read tool, a write tool, like there's many tools that it uses. This has to be added into the context because the model, the model doesn't call the tools. Like it's the agent harness around it that allows it to call the tools. And then in this case, we also have our code base, right? Like whatever if we're building a web app, a mobile app, I know most people here won't care for the specific framework and honestly we're getting to a point if you're not technically, you really shouldn't. And then we have the user conversation. So this is what the complete context window is filled with, right? And this can total up to let's say like at the beginning, this could be like 20,000 tokens. And as the conversation continues to grow, you might reach your limit of 25,000, 250,000 tokens. And that's when you see both Cloud Code and OpenAI Codex, they'll compact, right? So beautiful so far, right? This is how context works. Why skills are important and how you should generate skills. Let's say I have a specific workflow, for example, for my YouTube channel, you know, we're at a point right now where we get sponsors now. Crazy. Crazy joint. When I first came to the pot, not a thing. We get sponsors. There's just your mom sponsoring the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was just her show and love, feed it me. But now we get sponsors and I get a lot of emails. Some are good, some are bad, and it's a lot of time I'm sure you're aware to comb through and to check. So I have an OpenCloud agent that has its own email, right? I don't have it. I don't have it given access to my email because there's like attack vectors and I have an hack to force it on very careful with these things, but it has its own email. And every time I get an email from like a sponsor, I forward that email to the agent. Now, the first time I told my OpenCloud agent, I'm going to forward you emails, check every 15 minutes when you have an email. And when you check the email, do research on a sponsor and tell me if they're worth it. That's all I told the agent. Every sponsor email I sent it, it was like legit, legit, legit, perfect, perfect, perfect. There was no like, there was no rejection. There was no, this is bad or these guys are a scam or this product is not good. Like there was no deep research being done by it. So then I realized, huh, okay, the model needs a step by step guide. This is when I create a skill, but here's the problem. A lot of people will, I'll just write it down here, will identify, identify, they have a workflow, right? You have some sort of workflow and then they'll jump to create the skill right away. This is the, let me click hide here. This is the worst thing you can do. I'm just going to draw arrows to signify that this is bad. You don't do these. And the reason why you don't do this is, imagine you hire an employee or you're mentoring somebody. Correct me if I'm wrong. You're probably going to tell them what to do and if they ask you questions on how to do, you'll help them. You would ideally like them to fail and then you want to then tell them, no, this is how you do it. Like, there needs to be some sort of experiential learning. The way I've been creating skills, Greg, and I have like 100% hit right now when I tell my agent to do something specific is I actually walk with it step by step on doing the workflow. So in the case of my YouTube analysis, I told the agent, okay, I just sent you an email, tell me about the company. Companies this, this, that and that. Okay, check their Twitter, check their YouTube, check their trust pilot, check if they've raised any money. If two of these are not, two of these don't exist or are not in good standing, automatic rejection, it checked and it was like, you're absolutely right. I was using Opus. These, this is not a good company and then it would just, we would, we have a spreadsheet in Google Sheets. It'd be like, no contact. frustrating too, right? Because you're like, you give it a task and it seems like so binary, like, right or wrong. And then when you tell it, hey, like, why didn't you look at the trust pilot? Why didn't you see if they've raised money? You're absolutely right. Yeah, absolutely. It's like, what? And the thing is the reason why this is the case is the models actually don't think. They're predictors of tokens, right? So when you give it English, when I give it English, it maps it on this vector graph. And then it looks for the closest resemblance. And it says, this is the response, right? So when you say, what is the capital of France? It maps it again on this graph. And it says, Oh, Paris is pretty close by it. Then he gives you Paris. It has no, it doesn't think it doesn't understand. It feels like it understands it feels like it thinks. Hey, it even feels like it has emotion. That's because it's been trained on so much data. But it actually does not know how to think. And this is where a lot of people will be frustrated with like, why is it not understanding me? You have to walk with it. So I told it, okay, this is how you research. And it's like, okay, it researches. And guess what? This is part of the context. And we're like, okay, now that you're done researching, when it's a good company, these are the qualities you look for. And then when it's really good, send me an email. And then once we had a successful run and we did it again and again, then I converted it to skill. The reason being is a lot of people create the skills themselves or I mean, they'll use the AI to create the skill, but it doesn't have the context on what a successful run looks like. Because most of the time, especially if you're using OpenClaw, it's probably going to fail at the API call. It's probably going to call the data wrong. Like there's so many places it's going to get wrong. And I see a lot of people saying, it's just so frustrating. This is terrible technology. Why it doesn't work. It's because you don't understand how an agent works, right? It will mimic you perfectly. But you've given it nothing to mimic, right? So I will do the workflow myself. So the updated version is identify the workflow, go back and forth and teach it. So like I'm doing it. Like I'll be like, okay, first do the research. Here's the result. And I'm like, what do you think about this? Oh, these guys are terrible. Okay. What do you you should go to the Google sheet and mark this as bad company? I've done that. Once I've had that back of forth, then I tell the AI, review what you did and then create the skill. So now it has actual context with how it worked. And it's going to create the skill beautiful. I don't handwrite skills. I don't think you need to. You can use AI to do it. They even have a skill to create skills, skillception. But you should have the context of what a successful run looks like. And this is why, by the way, I don't install skills. Like I've seen people like, oh, this notion skill, this social media skill, whatever. I'll review it. I'll check it out. I'll leave you give it to my AI and be like, oh, what are some things we can learn from this? But I don't download skills because your agent needs the context of a successful run, which you then turn to skills. Right. And this is the big thing. I see you see skills marketplaces. You see download this and that. First of all, it's an easy way to attack somebody. So I would be very, very careful with downloading some random person skills. But second of all, again, it's all about context, right? It's all about and OpenClaw has a memory layer and all these type of things. You want it to do the right thing. And the only way it can do the right thing is if you give it the proper context. And to me, the best way to create a skill is to work with it in your specific workflow. Once you have a successful run, tell it, okay, review what you just did. This is the skill you need to create. I'll pause here. I mean, it makes sense, right? Because if you hired an employee, you would do the same thing. Yeah. You wouldn't just be like, okay, go do this thing. Good luck. Yeah. And by the way, this is how you're going to go do things forever. You would map out a workflow. You would identify what right and wrong is. You would do it iteratively. And then once you've gotten to that point, you would codify it. 100%. And I think like that's the thing. Like we should treat models in these agents like very new employees versus like these black magic boxes that like know everything, right? They know everything because they've been trained on a lot of data, but they don't know your workflow, your steps, right? So I see a lot of people who have, you know, 15 like right off the, they'll set up open claw and 15 sub agents, 30 skills. Yet you haven't even set up your own workflows, right? And these things are cool right off the bat. And there's a perfect time to use sub agents. I use sub agents a lot. But the way you build, like I call it scaling for productivity, not scaling for what looks cool, right? Like I've seen like, for example, paper, paper, paperclips looks awesome. Cool. I used it. I loved it, right? But I think people would be more productive if they built up from scratch their own version, meaning like, okay, you have your own like, you know, like editor, right? Content creator. So you're asking people to do the work. 100% 100% and because the thing is it's like, like I'm in the position where like people using like these beefed up things make a lot more sense for me. And the reason being is like I can build a product like that. Like I know what your audience wants. I know what my audience wants. Like, you know, heck, I spin up agents and build this thing, right? But if I'm going to be completely honest, if you want a scale for productivity, it starts with one agent and you building up the skills. And then, okay, now you've built up some skills and now you add a sub agent and you're one agent managed multiple agents, right? Like imagine this. Like imagine I start a company and offer rip. I have 10 employees never managed a team in my life. Heck, I don't even have a really big family. So like I'm alone. You know what I mean? So it's like you have to sort of yeah, it's not sexy. And I apologize if this is not the cool thing people want it to hear, but you sort of have to put in the work and build it up. And I and I personally believe you're building skills like your personal human skills, not skilled at MD files that when the models get better with the agents get better, you will be more valid because at the end of the day, as long as there's no new paradigm for models, let's just predict tokens. They don't understand or know the way you and I do, right? And this is while the like the job seen and all this stuff is scary, I genuinely believe anyone who knows how these tools work and like knows how to build agents and like craft skills and like knows how to make them productive. We're not for a good run. So you're saying that if you know how to do this, you won't join the permanent underclass. The permanent underclass. So is the permanent underclass basically like I've seen this this this on Twitter a lot. Is that basically AI has replaced you? So now you're just from what I understand it's once a GI comes, all these white collar workers are going to lose their jobs. And if you don't know how to build skills use AI, people say you're joining the permanent underclass. That's that's the term. It's permanent to that's scary. So I just have a little bit of time left. Yeah, by the way, like it's ridiculous to call it a permanent underclass. Yeah, because that's terrifying. I can understand underclass, but permanent. It's like, like you say, there's no hope like. Yeah. I mean, we are in like knowledge that took 20 people 20 years to acquire is not like 20 bucks a month, right? So there is like a huge shift, right? People who are non technical or I think I saw yesterday, like some guy hit like a hundred million dollars. And he vibed code at the whole app. I think it was him. 1.8 billion. Billion. Yeah. So you know what I mean? Like it is the there is a shift, right? And I think this idea of like, I love how you were like billion. You were about to just leave this podcast and just be like, no, you know what it is. I just realized, man, I overthink things. Like I just need to drop the thing, release the thing. And there's like wisdom in that like, there needs to be this level of delusion, which I don't have. Like I'm trying to work on where you're like, this is just going to work out. We're just going to launch the product. It's going to succeed. And if it doesn't, onto the next one, because 1.8 billion. Yeah, dude. Like B B USD. Yeah, we're not talking monopoly. Because of skin. We're not talking carney coins. We're talking real Benjamin. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. But yeah, like I hope this like understanding of like, again, I personally don't think you don't need an agent.md file unless you have something proprietary. Um, skills are valuable. Build your own though. Build build your own. Like you know, like when you asked your mom when you were a kid, oh, can we have McDonald's? And she's like, we have food at home. We have food at home. Build your own skills for coding perspective from coding wise. A lot of the companies, model companies have realized that the agents are really good at writing code, particularly TypeScript. And this is why there's been like, you see this advancement with like cloud co work and like even open claw. Really what they're doing under the hood is they're writing code, right? They're writing code, calling APIs and all this stuff. So when it comes to building a project, you actually don't need skills or like you don't need an agent.md file specific to the text that you use. Like I remember we used to I'm using React and you know, convicts or I'm using next JS and super base. I'm using this and I'm using that. And you put that in the agent.md file and you have like all these lines for the most part, unless again, you have a specific specific workflow unnecessary. And the reason being is Code itself has become context now. So the more important thing is starting with the Solid Foundation templates. Used to be big back in the day. People made lots of money with templates. I believe templates are gonna have a renaissance because if you have a solid template, like whether it be for a web app or mobile app because that becomes context for the agent, it's going to build on top of that. And again, I need some large agent.md file. I don't need any large cloud md file. What I needed was again, minimal context usage and skills. So if there's anything anyone can learn from me is build your own skills, build your own skills. And there's this methodology, I don't know if I've shared this with you, recursively building skills. So let's see you've built your skill, right? I have all draw diagram because why not? Let's say I have a workflow. And after you like setting up my workflow with an agent, I've decided you know what? I'm going to turn this into a skill, right? So this is my skill.md. Now here's the thing, even though you have the skill.md, the agent at some point is still going to mess up because there's probably gaps in the information it has in the skill. So when it messes up, I'm going to work with it again. How do I work with it? You messed up, try calling the API again, try doing this again, or even ask you when it tells you, oh, I failed, I couldn't do this task. Believe it or not, when you tell the agent, why did you fail? When you ask it, like, what's the error that you got? It will tell you descriptively, oh, I got a 505 error, you have insufficient credits. Like, oh, okay, so it's a credit issue, fine. So I would tell it that. And then I would pass that failure back to the agent. So let's say it did something wrong, we identified the failure, all I did was asking it. I will give that failure back to the agent. I'll be like, you failed here, this didn't work, fix this. It's going to fix, it's going to write code, it's going to do whatever it does. Once it fixes it and it's done it right, now you tell it with the new fix, update the skill, so this doesn't happen again. I have, like, for my YouTube channel, I have like a report generator. It calls notion, dub analytics, YouTube analytics, Twitter analytics, post from my, it posts from like eight data sources. There's no way you're going to one prompt and the agent's going to do it. But every time I tell it to do that, we're trying to take like 10 minutes, it executes it flawlessly. Why? I went through five loops of this. Five iterations of recursively building this skill. And that skill is so good, I genuinely think if anyone's going to, if like, skills market place is going to be a thing, there's going to be people who sell skills, like really well defined, like step by step skills, because people are just creating them without having built out the workflow with the agent, right? So use the workflow by hand, like telling it each step, once it's done it completely, create the skill.md file, continue to use it, it's going to mess up, when he messes up, you thank God, you don't complain, 'cause a lot of people are like, oh, he messed up, I'm angry, no, this is a moment where you identify the error, tell it, this is the error, fix it, it'll fix it itself, and then you tell it to update the skill file, so that this doesn't happen again. - So that's a little bit about shifting your expectation, right, 'cause people just assume it's going to work in the beginning, you're saying basically, it's not going to work initially, there's going to be two, three, five, six hiccups, and over time, it should be good. So this is most people's expectations, right? - Yeah. - And the way I've personally experienced is it's like this. So there's like this early area of investment that you have to make, that sucks, that nobody will tell you, especially Agent Harness' company, 'cause they wouldn't raise as much money if they did, but like this, maybe I would give it two weeks, 'cause it took me two weeks, like open-cloud, when I first set up open-cloud, I thought the same time, like what is this garbage? Or like it doesn't understand anything, it's confusing, and I realized like, oh, let me go lower level. The models and the agents, they don't think like you and me. I could tell you, hey Greg, we need a report on the financials and notion, because you're probably we're in the same business, we work together, you would understand based on the context you have of the business, what that means. But imagine a new guy joins, like yeah, I need a report on the financials. - So, what do I even start? - You know what I'm saying, I wonder if we can put this clip in, but in the office, you're watching the office? - I am not an office watcher, unfortunately. - There's a clip that there's a new boss, and the new boss goes to Jim, one of the new characters. Yeah, and he asks for a rundown. So go the office, the office, the rundown. - Oh no. - Basically, the whole episode is about, Jim trying to ask around and be like, "What is a rundown?" Like, what is a rundown? And he's like calling his dad like, "What is a rundown?" You know what I mean? He's just, he didn't have the context. - Yeah. - He didn't have the context. - Yeah. And it goes back to my initial point, the models are really, really good now, but the context matters more than anything, right? So when you see like these large agent, like companies and sub agents, and again, I'm not saying those don't work, but I'm saying probably won't work for you off-ripp because you haven't built it up to get to that point, right? So let's say like for me, for example, I started with one agent. Let me draw this. I started with one agent, and this was like my main agent. This did everything, right? This checked my spreadsheet, this checked my sponsor's email, and all these type of things. And once I had like predefined workflows, let's say for like working with sponsors, then I can actually have a sub agent. What's the purpose of the sub agent? The sub agent does all the marketing stuff, right? But I'm not creating the sub agent for the sake of creating it. It's going to have skills, it's going to have context, and it actually makes sense for me to have sub agents, right? So I've built out my thing to like, now I have five sub agents, I have one for marketing, one for business, one for personal, and that's it. And I'm willing to bet if I want open cloud or open cloud with anyone, my system is more productive because I didn't scale for what looks cool. I scale for productivity. That was a bar. - Yeah, it was a huge bar. We got to clip that. I was just thinking that clip, that's going to rip. - Yeah, that was a bar. - What else do you want to leave people with? Or is this the main point? - Yeah, like here's like, we've got to put where the models are good. The models are really good. The context matters plus the harness, right? So for example, there was this benchmark, although I'm not 100% supporting it, that there was a difference between the quality of output that cursor generated versus cloud code versus codex, right? So what that tells me is that we've reached a point where the models are really, really good. They're probably going to get better. The next iteration is probably going to get better. But the harness and the tools that you surrounded, the context that you give it is going to matter even more. And just like in everything in life, less is more, right? Like building up step by step, making it productive for you first before you add the shiny new thing. Like, 'cause I try out all these tools all the time, like especially paperclip, paperclip, blew up and a lot of people have been talking about and it's fantastic. But I'm willing to bet if people took two weeks to build up to the version, 'cause you can prompt open cloud to do all that stuff. If they built up their own version of paperclip in two, three weeks where like, they're building things that they actually need, their productivity levels skyrocket through the roof. - To hot tech. - To hot tech. - Might give me a trouble. - No, it won't get. Who's it going to get you in trouble with? - Maybe Perfect Clip uses a billion dollars and they don't acquire my podcast. (laughing) - I think, listen, you're out there, you're trying things and you're just sharing what you're learning in real time. So if you're just, you're not-- - Things can change by the way. - Yeah. - Like two weeks from now, it could be like, no, give the agent everything. There's this new memory paper that Google released and now it has the ability to index information and stuff, but as it pertains to real life, less is more, simple is better. If you can explain it in a few sentences, you probably don't really understand it. And I find that the models are trained on so much information, especially when it comes to programming, building, and what do you call data day work, like financial work or any sort of checking contracts and stuff, like the model companies are focusing on that, like on why color work. The models are really, really good. What matters more is the harness and the tools you provided. And the one thing that you and I have that the models don't have is my specific workflow, my specific taste, my specific strategy of doing things, and those can be codified in skills, right? This is why, like, skills make sense when you build them. Not if you download my skill, like, I have this one skill, like, again, don't download it. I'm telling you now, do not download it, don't use it. I just put it so I can get some GitHub stars. I have this one skill, and it's literally a code structure skill, and I'll put the mark down so people could see it. It's 116 lines. It's basically after AI is generated a bunch of code. I like it structured in a certain way, so it's easy for me to review it. And like I mentioned earlier with skills, the only thing that gets added into context the name and description. So when I look at the name, it's code structure. When I look at the description, use when multiple workflows duplicate the same operation logic when deciding that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, some nerd stuff. So when I tell the agent, I wanna clean up the code structure, it checks the skills it has, it sees the name, it reads the description. It's like, oh, this makes sense. Then it progressively discloses, meaning once it realizes it needs this skill, then it adds the rest of this, right? Versus, if this was my agent.md file, imagine every single time, and we can actually check how many tokens this is, let me check, what was it, open AI, token, tokenizer. If I go to this, so this is 944 tokens. So if this was an agent.md file, every single time I have a chat, I'm adding 944 tokens, tokens in cheap now. No. If I just have the name and the description's just 53 tokens. And it's not even cheap, it's just like, you're not trying to hit the limit quicker than you need to hit the limit. 'Cause the model will get dumb as the context window closes, right? So if you have a context window, and I can draw this out, if this is your context window, and the optimal is, you're between, there's always like, maybe like 10% is already filled with all the system prompt and all that stuff, you wanna be between, like, you know, fresh to like 70%. 'Cause the closer you get to 99%, 100%, like 99, 90, 80%, it starts to get dumb, right? And you could think of this like a human. Like imagine you throw a bunch of information again, and again, and again, and again, and again. And this is why like, when I was in school, like last minute study, you never worked for me. 'Cause like I didn't pay attention to the entire year, now I have to learn about polynomials, and I have to do these graphs, and there's this weird notation, it's impossible for me to catch up, right? And it's the same way with the agents. You wanna keep your context window, you wanna save your context window, 'cause aid saves you money, but not only that, it makes a more performant agent. So less is more, less is more, rely more on the model strengths, and what the model needs is what's unique and special about you, your workflow, your business, not general knowledge. Don't tell the model, use React. It knows to use React. Don't tell the model, things that should already be known for the, like, you know, tasks, like for example, like let's say I'm doing a financial report, and in the agents.md file, I say, to denote money, use a dollar sign. It's going to use a dollar sign, right? Now if you have a specific currency, then you'd like, oh, use this currency. This is the, you know, like for something that the agent won't do manually, like, won't know manually. That's when you have like your agent.md's, claw.md's, but honestly, these are a farce, you don't need them. Skills, skills, skills, skills, skills is what it's at. - Thanks for keeping it real. I appreciate you, man. - It's all I'm gonna do. - No, I appreciate it. Like always, I'll include links where you can follow Ross, Mike on YouTube and X and other places, in the show notes in the description. So go follow him there. Always clearly breaking down things. We, I have to be real with you. You weren't gonna come on the show today. - I wasn't, and I'll be honest, I told Greg, and I'm just gonna be frank, I'm like, I don't have that banger, you know, something new drop in, let's review it, 'cause if we're gonna be honest, there are not that many tools dropping nowadays. Like unfortunately, the big dogs are running the show. - Yeah. - The clods and the, the, the anthropics and the open AI, especially when it comes to general purpose and coding, they sort of run the game. So they're releasing updates and like all the stuff is already been covered. So I was like, Greg, I don't know if I have anything valuable. - And what did I say? - You're like the people, you know, you gotta think about impact, you gotta think about what, you know, this could apply to someone's, and you showed me like a, a testimony, right? - I sent a text to you. - Yeah. - I'm gonna pull it up. I sent a text to you of someone who saw a video that we did together. And that video got him into coding. Now he's running a cake business and he's making $150,000 a year in growing. And he said, "The Greg and Ross Mike episode in November last year's with God me into coding, I've recommended to everyone asking how to start out." And I just sent you that text and I said, it's not about the numbers, it's not about, you know, 'cause you said in the text, I see it sometimes, right? I need everything we do to get to 200K views. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - And I'm just like, I hope this gets 200K views or more, so like and comment to juice those algorithms. But if it gets 2,000 and two people end up taking this information and changes their business, their productivity, how they think about things. And you know, I think that's why, I think that's why you and myself have been put on this planet Earth is to inspire people to get their creative juices flowing. And so I thank you for coming on and taking time out of your day. - And I appreciate the motivation. And yeah, I hope this helps somebody and can we to be back with more? - Absolutely. All right, catch you later, dude.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Current AI models (like Opus and GPT) are highly capable, but their output quality depends heavily on how users guide them through context.
  2. Most users do not need extensive "agent.md" or "claw.md" files; these waste tokens by loading unnecessary information into every interaction. Skills are a more efficient alternative.
  3. Skills should be built by first manually walking the AI through a specific workflow, allowing it to learn from a successful example, and then having the AI generate the skill file based on that experience.
  4. Avoid downloading pre-made skills from marketplaces; they lack the contextual understanding of your specific workflow and may pose security risks.
  5. Treat AI agents like new employees

Summary:

The discussion emphasizes that while modern AI models are powerful, effective use requires proper context management. Most users unnecessarily overload agents with extensive configuration files, which consume tokens and reduce efficiency. Instead, the recommended approach is to utilize "skills"—modular instructions that are only loaded when needed.

The optimal method for creating skills is to first manually guide the AI through a task, providing step-by-step feedback to establish a successful workflow. After this experiential learning, the AI can review its actions and generate a tailored skill file. This process mirrors training a new employee and ensures the agent understands specific requirements.

The speaker advises against using pre-made skills from marketplaces due to a lack of contextual relevance and potential security issues. Ultimately, productivity scales by building custom skills through hands-on collaboration with the AI, treating it as a trainable assistant rather than a magical solution.

FAQs

Most users (95%) do not need an agent.md file unless they have proprietary company information or a specific methodology that must be referenced in every conversation. Otherwise, it wastes tokens by being added to the context repeatedly.

Skills are modular instructions that an agent can call upon only when needed, using progressive disclosure. Only the skill's name and description are kept in context, saving tokens and improving efficiency compared to large, always-present files.

First, identify a workflow and teach the agent step-by-step through experiential learning. After a successful run, have the agent review its actions and generate the skill itself, ensuring it captures the correct context and process.

It is generally not recommended to download skills from others due to security risks and lack of context. Skills should be built based on your own successful workflows to ensure the agent understands and mimics your specific processes correctly.

AI models are predictors of tokens, not thinkers. They map input to a vector graph and find the closest resemblance to generate a response, which can mimic understanding but lacks true comprehension or reasoning.

Start with one agent and build skills incrementally based on your workflows. Avoid prematurely adding multiple sub-agents or complex setups; focus on creating a solid foundation by teaching the agent your processes step-by-step.

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