IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Skills for organizations, partners, the ecosystem

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

1. Skills Preferred Over MCP for Lightweight Efficiency

Users favor Skills as simpler, less context-polluting alternatives to MCP, ideal for local prompts and instructions.

  • "I have seen ~10 IQ points drop with each MCP I added. I have replaced them all with either skill-like instructions" – asadm
  • "Skills keep the context out unless it's needed. It's a much better system in my experience." – AndyNemmity
  • "Skills are specific, contextual, and persistent (stateful) whereas LLMs are not" – verdverm

2. Skepticism on Longevity of Agent Standards

Many doubt Skills, MCP, and similar will endure amid rapid evolution and proliferation of frameworks.

  • "How likely are we to look back on Agent/MCP/Skills as some early Netscape peculiarity?" – reedf1
  • "The agentic development scene has slowly turned into a full-blown JavaScript circus" – mrbonner
  • "Agent/MCP/Skills might be 'Netscape-y' in the sense that today's formats will evolve fast." – irrationalfab

3. Practical Value in Real-World Use Cases

Despite doubts, users report high ROI in encoding knowledge, integrations, and workflows like biotech research or migrations.

  • "In the context I work in (biotech) I've found it a pretty high-ROI way to give lots of different types of researchers access to a variety of tools" – anthuswilliams
  • "Skills have been really helpful in my team as we've been encoding tribal knowledge" – detkin
  • "I used one to migrate a site from WordPress to Sanity... much quicker and more flexible" – james2doyle

🚀 Project Ideas

Universal AI Skills Package Manager

Summary

  • A CLI and web-based package manager for discovering, installing, and managing Skills, MCPs, and agent instructions across LLM tools like Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI.
  • Solves fragmentation by supporting multiple formats (Skills MD, MCP servers, AGENTS.md), auto-conversion, and lazy-loading to prevent context bloat.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers, teams using agentic LLMs for coding/research
Core Feature npx skills install repo/skill-name with format conversion, versioning, repo search, and integration hooks for tools like Claude Desktop
Tech Stack Node.js CLI, GitHub API, SQLite for local cache, YAML/JSON parsers for spec conversion
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: Freemium (pro: private repos, team sync)

Notes

  • Addresses "plugin marketplace in a git repo" (Seattle3503), "package manager for AI tools" like sx (detkin), and "universal skill installer" feedback (skillcreator).
  • HN would love cross-tool compatibility reducing "JavaScript circus" fragmentation (mrbonner, hnlmorg).

Skills Context Optimizer

Summary

  • RAG-powered tool that indexes Skills/MCPs, dynamically selects and summarizes relevant ones per task, injecting only necessary context into LLM prompts.
  • Fixes context pollution from "too many tools and tokens" (throwup238, asadm), improving tool-calling accuracy without manual culling.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Heavy LLM users frustrated with bloated contexts in agent workflows
Core Feature Embed Skills metadata, semantic search via local embeddings (e.g., on task query), generate minimal prompt injections with validation
Tech Stack Python, FAISS/LlamaIndex for RAG, Ollama/local LLM for querying, VS Code/Claude extensions
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • Directly tackles "building a rag for searching correct MCP" (asadm), "preload all tools up front wasteful" (irrationalfab), and Anthropic's advanced tool-use advice (verdverm).
  • Practical for biotech/SRE (anthuswilliams), migrations (james2doyle); sparks discussion on lazy-loading evolution.

Enterprise Skills Deployment Hub

Summary

  • Git-hosted service for org-wide Skills/MCP repos with web UI, MDM bundling (Jamf), auto-symlinks, and workflow validation.
  • Enables "shoving Notion/Figma workflows" (alexgotoi), team sharing without infra triples, tribal knowledge encoding (detkin).

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Engineering teams, biotech/research orgs deploying LLM tools
Core Feature Git repo marketplace, one-click bundles for desktop clients, diff/validation UI, role-based access
Tech Stack Next.js, GitLab/GitHub Actions, Docker for MCP bundles, Jamf API integration
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue-ready: SaaS ($10/user/mo)

Notes

  • Solves "plug that into the web interface" (Seattle3503), biotech bundling (anthuswilliams), multi-repo sync (detkin).
  • HN commenters would appreciate enterprise push beyond "personal toy" (alexgotoi), countering transience fears with versioning (reedf1, xnx).

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