Claude skills should split prose, scripts, and tools instead of keeping everything as text
socialwithaayan · x · 2026-07-24
The author argues that in Claude skills, the important distinction is not whether a capability is written as prose or code, but whether it should be expressed as an instruction, a script, or a tool call.
Their rule of thumb is:
- Keep prose for judgment, tone, and context-sensitive adaptation.
- Move deterministic work to scripts: calculations, format conversions, file operations, validation checks, and any task that should always produce the same output.
- Use real tools/connectors when the skill needs to do actual work rather than merely describe how work should happen.
The broader lesson is that skills rot when they stay as instructions for things that should have been automated.
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