Dev.to
7/15/2026
The original headline is: "Why domain experts should author AI agent skills instead of developers"
Original: The best person to write your AI agent's skills probably can't write YAML
Short summary
Most AI agent skills are mediocre because developers write them from secondhand descriptions instead of the domain experts who actually know the workflows. The fix is to separate authorship from plumbing: let experts write the procedural knowledge and let developers handle YAML, tool permissions, and sync wiring. Skills should be tested, versioned, and reviewed before rollout—treating them like production code.
- •Domain experts, not developers, should author agent skill content—developers should own only the plumbing
- •Skills need trigger testing, versioning, and a review step before reaching production agents
- •Authorship by the expert plus review before rollout improves skill quality more than prompt-tuning
Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.
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