Skill(.md)s, context engineering, and a way to take the garbage out

SKILL.md files are a great way to export knowledge from one engineer to another. Think of them as training docs that someone can read, but if they don't want to, they can assign their assistant, or copilot, to read them and do the work.

Sharing knowledge (context) across larger engineering organizations that are engaged in agentic engineering (go ahead, call it vibe coding, but then we can't be friends), should make everyone more productive, until it doesn't. Done right, big win. Done wrong, failures may not be recognizable as such until well after you shipped what you thought was working code.

In this session, I'll cover:

• general benefits of SKILL.md files,
• how my teams are using SKILL.md files at Shipt to share context with one another
• Cite an academic study measuring the effects of bad context on coding assistant outcomes
• Tell you why I believe you should audit your context if you are not sure if your SKILL.md files might be conflicting
• Show a SKILL.md that checks other skill files (yo dawg, I heard you like SKILL.md files)
• Tell you how you can do the same

• Plead with you to stop thinking of SKILL.md files a "just markdown"

• Full Slide Deck - on LinkedIn

• References Slide - on LinkedIn

• Intermediate
• Development
• AI/ML