# I Was Wrong About Agent Skills and How I Refactor

<https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1opxgq4/i_was_wrong_about_agent_skills_and_how_i_refactor/>

## Summary

The post discusses a developer's reconsideration of their approach to organizing agent capabilities and skills in Claude-based systems. The author initially believed in structuring agent functionality around discrete "skills" as separate modules, but through practical experience, they discovered limitations and inefficiencies in this architecture.

**Key Points:**

* **Original Approach**: The author organized agent capabilities as isolated skill modules, assuming this would improve maintainability and reusability
* **Discovered Problems**: This structure led to increased complexity, redundant code, and made it harder for Claude to reason about interconnected tasks
* **Core Issue**: Breaking functionality into too granular "skills" created artificial boundaries that didn't reflect how tasks actually interconnect in real-world scenarios
* **New Understanding**: Agent capabilities work better when organized around workflows and domains rather than micro-level skills
* **Better Practice**: Grouping related capabilities together and allowing Claude to understand the full context of interconnected operations leads to better reasoning and performance
* **Refactoring Strategy**: The author now focuses on organizing code by business domain and workflow patterns rather than trying to create perfectly isolated, reusable skills

**Practical Takeaway**: When building Claude-based agents, prioritize coherent task domains and workflow organization over creating maximally reusable, isolated skill components.

{% @mermaid/diagram content="graph TD
A\["Initial Approach:<br/>Discrete Skills"] -->|Practical Issues| B\["Problems Found:<br/>Complexity & Fragmentation"]
B -->|Learning| C\["New Understanding:<br/>Domain-Driven Organization"]
C -->|Result| D\["Better Performance:<br/>Coherent Workflows"]" %}


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