ACI-016: Skills as Procedural Memory

Thesis

In most software ecosystems, a "plugin" is code that runs. In agentic coding, a "skill" is a procedural guide that the agent reads and follows. This inversion -- from executable code to readable instructions -- is non-obvious and changes how you think about extending agent capabilities. Skills are procedural memory: they teach the agent how to do something, not do it for the agent.

Story

Intent has 22 skills. None of them contain executable plugin code in the traditional sense. Each skill is a SKILL.md file -- a markdown document with structured instructions that Claude reads when the skill is invoked. Some skills have optional scripts/ and data/ directories, but the core mechanism is always the same: the agent reads the instructions and follows them.