Re:Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?
by sleepybrett on Monday September 07, 2026 @11:27PM
(#49605381)
the problem with that, that i'm seeing is just the sheer proliferation of internal skills. There are now so many that I can't see how they can possibly remain maintained.
It feels like at the project/product/middle management layer this type of 'big pile of skills to do some very specific task' is very popular. I think this is probably for a few reasons.
I think the largest factor is that these task management items are really just like .. calling a few different apis and slapping it through some jinja to post to github and create a jira ticket.. whatever. For an engineer, we can knock that out over coffee. But for this middle management layer, not a lot of them have the will or the skills to pop open the ide and code themselves a tool. Until the advent of skills that is. So I think they are a bit drunk with power. Which yaknow we'll see.
The skills are starting to become the documentation for these types of things as well as a way to automate it. This is great, but this type of 'documentation' is exactly the type of thing that goes non-updated for years in some dark corner of confluence. So I suspect the little used skills are going to fall to 'context rot'.
As an engineer, I keep all those skills in one very specific claude project and keep that largely separate from any given claude session that's helping me design a feature.
It feels like at the project/product/middle management layer this type of 'big pile of skills to do some very specific task' is very popular. I think this is probably for a few reasons.
I think the largest factor is that these task management items are really just like .. calling a few different apis and slapping it through some jinja to post to github and create a jira ticket.. whatever. For an engineer, we can knock that out over coffee. But for this middle management layer, not a lot of them have the will or the skills to pop open the ide and code themselves a tool. Until the advent of skills that is. So I think they are a bit drunk with power. Which yaknow we'll see.
The skills are starting to become the documentation for these types of things as well as a way to automate it. This is great, but this type of 'documentation' is exactly the type of thing that goes non-updated for years in some dark corner of confluence. So I suspect the little used skills are going to fall to 'context rot'.
As an engineer, I keep all those skills in one very specific claude project and keep that largely separate from any given claude session that's helping me design a feature.