Agent Skills Anti-Patterns: 10 Problems and Better Fixes
Ten real Agent Skills failure modes—from invalid metadata and false portability claims to unsafe scripts and invented evidence—with standards-based fixes.
AgentSkills, AntiPatterns, AIAgents
Nicolas Hawat
Founder & CEO
Nicolas Hawat is the Founder and CEO of Start Me Up AI, bringing over a decade of experience in developing intelligent software solutions, particularly in the financial sector for trading software used by international banks and trading desks. He leads SMUAI's mission to deliver enterprise-grade AI solutions that save startups 6-12 months of development time.
Background
In 2023, while experimenting with generative AI, Nicolas saw its potential to make software development faster and more reliable. He built an internal AI developer that became the foundation of Byblos AI's tech agents.
That internal AI developer is the AI Co-CTO, designed to transform how development teams build, test, and ship software.
Areas of Expertise
- AI Development: Generative AI, LLMs, RAG systems
- DevOps & MLOps: CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code
- Backend Development: Python, FastAPI, Node.js
- Financial Software: Trading systems, Murex Flex API
- Cloud Infrastructure: AWS, Pulumi, Cloudflare
Vision
At Start Me Up AI, Nicolas leads the mission to empower startups and businesses withreliable, scalable, and cost-effective software solutions. That mission now runs throughByblos AI, an AI co-founder platform covering product, brand, campaigns, technical planning, and codebase delivery. It lets startups avoid settling for modest solutions that are hard to scale, and instead get enterprise quality at startup-friendly prices.
Articles by Nicolas
Byblos AI Is in Private Beta: Request Access and Shape It
Byblos AI, the AI co-founder platform from StartMeUp AI, is now in private beta. Request access at byblosai.app, put Sy PM, Brand Manager, and Campaign Manager to work on a real idea, and tell us what to build next. We are also live on Product Hunt.
ByblosAI, PrivateBeta, AICoFounder
Sy PM: An AI Product Manager for Startup Product Delivery
Sy PM, the AI product manager inside Byblos AI, is now in private beta. It turns founder context into connected, reviewable product artifacts while tracking evidence, confidence, dependencies, approvals, and a build-ready Co-CTO handoff.
SyPM, ByblosAI, AIProductManager
Audit Agent Skills With a Practical Readiness Scorecard
Separate standards compliance, vendor compatibility, workflow quality, and runtime evidence with a ten-point Agent Skills audit designed for real engineering repositories.
AgentSkills, AIAgents, CodeReview
How AI Agents Reliably Discover and Load Skills at Runtime
Skill selection begins with metadata, not the hidden body. Learn the documented progressive-disclosure model and the observable evaluation method we use to improve routing.
AgentSkills, AIAgents, SkillSelection
Portable Agent Skills Across Copilot, Codex, and Claude
The SKILL.md content format is portable, but discovery paths and runtime behavior differ. Use this vendor matrix and adapter strategy to avoid false one-setup claims.
AgentSkills, GitHubCopilot, OpenAICodex
Custom Instructions for AI Coding Agents Without Duplication
Learn how Copilot, Codex, and Claude load repository instructions, and how we keep one source of truth while preserving tool-specific discovery paths.
CustomInstructions, AIAgents, AgenticCoding
Agent Personas vs. Skills: Role, Rules, and Workflow
Personas and skills are not interchangeable. Learn the separation we use between role, persistent repository rules, and task procedures—and where it is convention rather than standard.
AIAgents, AgentSkills, AgentPersonas
How to Write Reliable Agent Skills for AI Coding Workflows
Learn what the Agent Skills standard actually requires, what agents see during discovery, and the authoring practices we use to make workflows clear, safe, and testable.
AgentSkills, AIAgents, AgenticCoding
How to Structure .github/ for AI Coding Agents
A clean .github/ directory is the difference between agents that follow your standards and agents that guess. Here is the layout for skills, agents, and instructions — and the rules that keep each in its lane.
AgentSkills, RepositoryStructure, AIAgents
Get in Touch
Interested in discussing how AI can accelerate your startup's development?
Contact Nicolas