Progressive disclosure.
Understand how skills keep context lean by loading metadata first and detailed references only on demand.
Developer masterclass · Two hours
Agent Skills:
From prompt to capability.
Stop copy-pasting the same instructions into every chat. Learn to package, test, and distribute modular engineering capabilities using the open Agent Skills standard and Claude Code.
01 / What you will learn
Inspect before trusting.
Evaluate open-source skills with an adversarial eye for tool permissions, network calls, and scripts.
Build a real capability.
Construct, test, and harden an automated change-risk reviewer that audits Git diffs for behavioral and security risks.
02 / Curriculum
Capabilities in practice.
Designed for developers who use AI coding assistants and want to turn repetitive engineering workflows into reliable, reusable tools.
Why skills exist
Move from repeated prompt pasting to modular, version-controlled capabilities.
Mechanism selection
Choose correctly between skills, CLAUDE.md, hooks, subagents, and MCP servers.
Anatomy & standard
Master the open Agent Skills directory layout, YAML frontmatter, and instructions.
Progressive disclosure
Design three-tier context: lightweight catalog, body activation, and on-demand resources.
Curated skills & trust
Audit real-world engineering skills for safety, execution risks, and tool permissions.
Hands-on build
Construct a change-risk-review skill with structured findings and line-level citations.
Hardening & testing
Add deterministic helper scripts, test against real diffs, and ensure cross-tool portability.
Power techniques
Practical hacks: btw side queries, context forks, headless CI routines, and Agents.md.
03 / Format
Deconstruct.
Build.
Harden.
The session includes an interactive teardown of production open-source skills and a hands-on exercise building a change risk reviewer tested against three real-world code diff scenarios.
120minutes
3diff scenarios
1portable skill
Prerequisites: basic command line, Git, and software-development familiarity. No prior experience authoring agent skills is required.
Last reviewed September 2026
This independent educational workshop is built around the open Agent Skills specification (agentskills.io) and Claude Code.
Turn prompts into capabilities
Bring modular agent skills
to your engineering team.
Run this two-hour masterclass internally to establish standard, reviewable agent workflows across your codebase.
Discuss a session