Agents Are Learning to Write Their Own SKILL.md Files

The Agent Skills open standard today, and the 2026 research on agents that write their own skills.

TL;DR: In late 2025, "Agent Skills" became a thing — a dead-simple way to teach an AI agent a task: a folder with a SKILL.md file (some instructions in Markdown). It's already an open standard. The wild part is what's coming next: agents that write their own skills. I built a demo where an agent solves a task the hard way once, saves a real SKILL.md, and then reuses it — cutting its total effort almost in half. ~130 lines, no API key.

First, what's a "skill"?

If you've used Claude Code or similar tools lately, you've probably seen SKILL.md files. The idea is refreshingly low-tech. A "skill" is just a folder with a Markdown file that says how to do something:

name: csv-to-markdown