How Skill Files give AI agents the context to build like you
I have been building in Coda long enough to have strong opinions about how things should be done. Some of those opinions I have written about on this blog. Others live in recurring decisions I make without thinking.
That last part is what pushed me toward Skill Files. In the previous post I made the case that Skills replace templates — not because templates are technically broken, but because they solve the wrong problem. What makers actually need isn’t a pre-built structure to copy. It’s the reasoning behind the structure.
The Coda Curious is the brand we built around this question. How do you give an AI agent the context it needs to work the way you work?
What is a Skill File?
A Skill File is a structured Markdown document that tells an AI agent — concretely, in plain language — how to think and behave inside a specific environment. By providing a defined title and description, you help your AI stay on track and perform more effectively.
In practice, that means things like:
- Table names follow a
DBprefix convention. Why? Because it visually separates base tables from cross-docs and views at a glance.
