24 Months in Production. The Missing Piece Finally Clicked.

Last week I shared three stories: how we bet on no-code agents before anyone believed, how we handled 12 months of chaos without rewrites, and why Big Tech can't build what we're building.

This week: what we actually built.

Let me start with something 24 months in production taught us.

The Missing Piece

Every agent we built at Agentman had five components:

• Goal — What to achieve

• Tasks — When to do things

• Tools — What capabilities to use

• Guardrails — What to avoid

• Brand/Voice — How to sound

But something was missing. The intelligence layer.

How does an agent actually accomplish a task?

SOPs Worked—Until They Didn't

We filled this gap with SOPs—Standard Operating Procedures.

They worked brilliantly for support and operational workflows:

→ "Here's how to process a return"

→ "Here's how to escalate a ticket"

→ "Here's how to verify insurance eligibility"

But when we needed marketing intelligence? Product expertise? Domain knowledge?

We'd dump in materials and hope the agent figured it out. We were HOPING instead of ARCHITECTING.

Then Anthropic Gave Us the Language

When Anthropic announced Claude Skills, everything clicked.

They gave us the language and the vision for how to systematize business intelligence—and in doing so, created a de facto standard for the industry.

Skills aren't just documentation. They're standardized, progressively-accessible intelligence that agents can pull exactly when needed.

AGENT = Goal + Tasks + Tools + Guardrails + Brand + SKILLS

Real examples we're deploying in production:

→ E-commerce: How to process returns at a Shopify store—edge cases, refund policies, exceptions

→ Healthcare: How to perform eligibility checks with Cigna—API sequences, compliance rules, error handling

→ Marketing: How to craft LinkedIn posts matching brand voice—tone, style, examples

Skills are the "how to do it right" layer.

Why Skills Change Everything

Standardized thinking

Company intelligence has consistent structure. Not a 50-page prompt dump—structured knowledge the agent accesses when needed.

Progressive access

Agents get exactly the intelligence they need, when they need it. Not everything upfront. Just-in-time knowledge.

Build once, deploy anywhere

Keep goal, tasks, tools, guardrails standard. Swap skills per customer. Same agent architecture, different domain intelligence.

❌ Before Skills: Custom agent per customer = 2-4 weeks per deployment

✅ With Skills: Standard agent + custom skills = 2-4 days per deployment

That's 10x faster.

We Built a Skills Platform

This isn't just a concept. We're shipping a complete Skills builder.

Agentman Skills Library

Import & Create

Import Claude-compatible skills directly
Create new skills with our visual editor
Structure: SKILL.md + scripts + references + assets

Collaborate

Team-wide skill library
Version control built in
Edit visually—no code required
Share across your organization

Agentman Skill Editor

Use Anywhere

Here's what makes this powerful:

→ Use skills in Claude via our skills.agentman.ai MCP server

→ Use skills in ChatGPT via the same MCP server

→ Use skills in Agentman agents as native business intelligence

Agentman Studio - Adding Skills to Agents

One skill. Three platforms. Your domain expertise works everywhere.

Real skills we're using right now:

agentman-brand-voice — Our brand, tone, and style guidelines

agentman-social-media — LinkedIn post creation matching our voice

internal-comms — Company communication formats and templates

mcp-builder — Guide for creating MCP servers

The Complete Agent Architecture

Component

Purpose

Goals

Tell agents WHAT to achieve

Tasks

Tell agents WHEN to do things

Tools

Tell agents WITH what capabilities

Guardrails

Tell agents WHAT to avoid

Brand

Tell agents HOW to sound

Skills

Tell agents HOW to do it right

The best agents aren't the ones with the most tools or the longest prompts. They're the ones with the right intelligence, accessed at the right moment.

Skills Complete the Flywheel

In Email 1, I introduced our Build→Test→Observe flywheel: AgentStudio, AgentForge, and AgentLens.

Skills are the connective tissue that makes the flywheel work:

In AgentStudio: Attach skills to agents. Same agent template, different domain intelligence per customer.

In AgentForge: Test against skill requirements. Does the agent follow the SOP correctly?

In AgentLens: Observe skill usage in production. Which skills are accessed? Where do agents deviate?

The flywheel doesn't just improve agents. It improves skills. Production insights refine procedures. Better procedures create better agents.

Why This Matters for You

If you're building agents today:

Skills let you capture domain expertise once and reuse it everywhere. Stop copying prompts between agents. Start building a library of organizational intelligence.

If you're evaluating platforms:

Ask whether they have a Skills architecture. If domain knowledge is embedded in prompts, you'll hit scaling walls. If it's extracted into Skills, you can grow.

If you're using Claude or ChatGPT directly:

Our skills.agentman.ai MCP server lets you bring structured business intelligence to any AI. You don't need to switch platforms. Just add Skills.

Coming This Week

Wednesday: AgentLens launch—agent-first observability and what makes it different from generic LLM tools.

Thursday: Our vertical strategy—healthcare, e-commerce, and where we're headed in 2026.

Try the Skills Platform

Import a skill. Create your own. Attach it to an agent. See how structured intelligence changes everything.

Get Started Free →