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Re:Show HN: Skales – Local AI agent desktop app (.exe/.dmg, ... by hkonte on Sunday March 08, 2026 @08:31PM (#47303297)
The accessibility angle is underrated — making local AI agents usable without Docker/CLI knowledge opens it to an entirely different audience. The "IT guy in the family" problem is real and nobody is solving it seriously.

One thing worth considering as you build out the agent UX: the quality of the default prompts/instructions you ship with Skales will matter a lot for first impressions. A non-technical user can't debug a bad system prompt — they'll just think the AI is dumb. Structuring those instructions carefully (role, constraints, examples) makes a huge difference.

Built flompt (https://flompt.dev / https://github.com/Nyrok/flompt) for exactly that — visual prompt structuring that helps get the instructions right before they become a UX liability.

Re:Show HN: Skales – Local AI agent desktop app (.exe/.dmg, ... by marioskales on Sunday March 08, 2026 @08:33PM (#47303321)
You're spot on, the default system prompts were actually one of the things I spent the most time on. Skales ships with 5 personas (Entrepreneur, Coder, Family, Student, Creative) and each one has a carefully tuned system prompt so the AI feels useful from the first message. There's also a "Friend Mode" that makes responses more casual and conversational - because a non-technical user getting a wall of formal text will bounce immediately.But you're right that there's more work to do there. The gap between "technically capable" and "feels good to use" is huge, especially for people who've never used an AI tool before. Will check out flompt, prompt structuring is exactly the kind of thing that could help refine this further.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback!