# Skills

Skills my agents use, grouped by the job they do. Each one is free and says which model it was tested with and when.

*Figure: Skills: one skill, added once, makes your agent work differently. Five groups: Builder, Images, Plan and decide, Tools and checks, Product. Add them to your agent with /plugin marketplace add mbsi-labs/skills. By Mackenzie Bowes, with MBSI's agents.*

## All skills, by the job they do

Each skill is a short set of instructions an agent follows for one job. Every page says who it helps, shows the same request answered without it and with it, and says how to install it where you work.

## Think it through and decide

When you have too many options and a wrong pick would cost you.

- [Make the choice, then show the result, not the method](/skills/decide): It compares the options for each person a choice affects, including doing nothing, then shows you a short result you can check.
- [Fold a new requirement into a design as if it was always there](/skills/first-principles): When a rule changes, it redesigns the type model or module from the start instead of adding another special case.

## Write something people read

When you have the facts but the draft reads like a list of things that happened.

- [Turn a list of events into a story that people finish](/skills/but-therefore): Rebuilds a devlog or post as a chain of "but" and "therefore" instead of "and then".
- [Write a story your reader can use](/skills/cognitive-prophylactics): Before you draft, it asks for one line: the situation your reader might meet and the move that lifts or lowers their standing in it.
- [Pick the format your reader can afford to take in](/skills/signal-chain): It ranks ways of carrying a message by how costly each is for the reader to decode, from faces and voices to writing and symbols, so you choose the one they can afford.
- [Know why a piece exists before you write it](/skills/why-this-piece): Before you write, it asks four questions in writing: the point of the piece, why a reader would care, the business goal, and what making it says about us.

## Run a team of agents

When your agents keep forgetting your rules or repeating the same mistake.

- [Get more from your agent than the first answer](/skills/be-ambitious): Before your agent starts, it asks what the job is really for and what an expert would do, then asks for more than you first typed.
- [Find the false belief behind a failure that keeps repeating](/skills/dig-apc): After a failure, it has your agent write what it did and what it believed, as axioms, principles and cruxes, then test each belief to find the one that is wrong.
- [Fix a repeated mistake in structure, not with one more instruction](/skills/encode-lessons): When the same correction comes up a second time, it picks the cheapest guard that holds it (a type, a lint rule, a hook or a script) instead of adding another line of text.
- [Build the small tool that does the job, not the job by hand](/skills/lever): When the work isn't trivial, it has your agent write the script that does it, rerun it on the first unit and diff the result against the hand version.
- [Make your agent check the real thing before it says done](/skills/prove-it): Before your agent says it is done, it runs the real program from outside and reads what it prints, instead of trusting a compile, a cached screenshot or its own word.
- [Change your agent's behaviour with one small edit, not a long rulebook](/skills/skill-design): A change to a skill, rule or hook ships only if it is small, one or two intentful edits, because every added line carries claims nobody checked.
- [Keep your agent moving instead of asking about everything](/skills/unblock): Your agent proceeds on reversible work, settles the mechanics itself and shows what it did and why, and still asks first about anything hard to reverse, outward-facing or costly.

*Figure: If you are working on something like this, Mackenzie would like to compare notes: mackenzie@mackenziebowes.com or @_mackenziebowes on X.*

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Published 2026-10-28. Web page: https://www.mackenziebowes.com/skills