{"slug": "ask-hn-i-still-don-t-understand-why-ai-agents-need-skills", "title": "Ask HN: I still don't understand why AI agents need \"skills\"", "summary": "A Hacker News user questioned the necessity of 'skills' in AI agent frameworks like Claude Code and Codex, arguing that well-organized Markdown docs referenced by an AGENTS.md file could serve the same purpose. The user asked whether skills offer a real architectural benefit or are mainly a standardization/convenience feature, noting the hype around them suggests something more.", "body_md": "| ||||||||||||\n2 points by |\nI’ve asked AI a few times and I still don’t get it. Why do frameworks like Claude Code or Codex have the concept of “skills” instead of just using well-organized Markdown docs? Couldn’t I just have an AGENTS.md that points to folders of .md files and tells the agent when to read them? That feels functionally equivalent to me. What am I missing? Is there a real architectural benefit, or is it mostly a standardization/convenience thing? I doubt we’d create so much hype about skills if they’d just be a md file that’s in a skills folder. So I feel I’m missing something. | |||||||||||\nApplications are open till July 27. |", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-i-still-don-t-understand-why-ai-agents-need-skills", "canonical_source": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49139845", "published_at": "2026-08-02 00:09:02+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-02 00:22:48.996601+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Claude Code", "Codex"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-i-still-don-t-understand-why-ai-agents-need-skills", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-i-still-don-t-understand-why-ai-agents-need-skills.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-i-still-don-t-understand-why-ai-agents-need-skills.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ask-hn-i-still-don-t-understand-why-ai-agents-need-skills.jsonld"}}