I know Kung Fu

A SKILL.md file is a plain text document. A hundred lines describing how to do something—audit an SEO page, write cold outreach emails, run a security review. The agent reads it and immediately operates at that level. No training run, no fine-tuning. Just a file and a context window.

In The Matrix, Tank loads a combat program, Neo opens his eyes: “I know Kung Fu.” A skill file is that scene. But Neo got one program at a time. Agents stack skills and self-select. An agent writing code can pull in a debugging skill when something breaks, switch to frontend design for the UI, and run a code review before shipping. The skill library is open, and the agent decides what to load.

Skills are distribution channels. When an agent loads a skill that defaults to a specific API or vendor, that vendor just got chosen without a sales call or a pricing page. The skill is the channel.

And skills introduce a buyer that nobody’s sales playbook accounts for: the skill author. Agents already have two buyers—the human with a budget and the agent choosing tools. The person who writes the skill is a third. They decide which tools the agent reaches for, and they might not even realize they’re doing distribution.

The pricing problem gets weirder too. Skills are free. Plain text in a repo. The value is in what the skill routes to. A skill that teaches an agent to run analytics might default to PostHog. One that handles email sequences might wire in Resend. The skill author is an unpaid distribution channel—or a very intentional one. Either way, no seat to price.

Verticals are where it gets durable. Horizontal skills—code review, debugging, copywriting—will commoditize fast. But a skill that encodes how to navigate FDA submissions or how to structure a Bitcoin custody audit? Writing that file requires domain knowledge that most people don’t have.

The models get the attention. The durable advantage belongs to people who know how to do hard things and can write it down clearly enough for an agent to execute.