# Biggest Unlock for AI Agents in 2026: Skillsmaxxing

Greg Isenberg talks with Remy (AI with Remy) about treating agent skills as markdown SOPs, then sharing them across a team via a GitHub repo installed as a Claude Code / Codex plugin (one source of truth, auto-update, company ownership).

Tags: youtube-inbox, source, greg-isenberg, remy, skills, plugins, claude-code, codex, team-skills, sop

## Summary

Remy’s claim: a skill is an SOP for AI — a markdown file that teaches Claude a specific way to do a repeatable task. Most skills still live on one laptop (the “Microsoft Word era”). He puts team skills in one GitHub repo, grouped by department, and installs that repo as a plugin so Claude Code and Codex pick them up with auto-update and git rollback. A separate personal repo holds sandbox / private skills. He also built a web UI on top of the team repo (skill graph, ask-box, usage hook).

## Key points

- **Skill = markdown SOP.** Without one, you re-explain preferences every session. With one, Claude reads the file and one-shots the task. Demo: sponsorship proposal for Greg / Startup Ideas, using a proposal-generation skill, branded in one shot.
- **How the agent uses them.** Remy’s picture: capable employee at a desk with tools/MCPs, instruction file, and a bookshelf of SOPs. Name + description sit on the “spine”; the agent pulls the full file when needed.
- **Single-player problem.** Team members have their own Claude/Codex setups; a good skill stays on one machine. Comparison: Word docs mailed around vs Google Docs as one shared file.
- **Examples from one week (Remy):** Notion formatting (whitespace, dividers, blue highlights); AI with Remy brand voice; email formatting for Resend.
- **Sharing that fails:** zip/Slack/email (duplicates, no auto-update); Drive/Dropbox/Obsidian (Claude only reads `.claude/skills`, so you need symlinks; breaks for non-technical teammates).
- **What works:** GitHub repo of team skills + plugin. In Claude Code: `/plugin` → add marketplace → paste repo URL → install department plugins. Auto-update on so edits propagate. Same plugin pattern tested in Codex; other harnesses not really tested.
- **Plugin anatomy:** skills dump in the repo plus a few JSON files Claude/Codex read. Remy had Claude write those. A prompt (linked in the description) is meant to turn an existing skills folder into this repo+plugin setup.
- **Two repos.** Team skills (company GitHub org, department plugins). Personal “Remy Skills” sandbox (inbox triage, morning brief, downloaded skills not ready to roll out). Reasons for the personal repo: cloud access for VPS/Hermes/cloud agents, version control, backup.
- **Backup story (Remy, ~two months before the recording):** Claude deleted his Claude folder with 150 skills and ~500+ hours of work; no backups. PTSD joke; “don’t be like Remy from two months ago.”
- **Company asset.** Skills in the org repo stay if an employee leaves. Claude Enterprise org plugins can bake the marketplace in so non-technical staff skip the terminal slash command.
- **Web app on the repo.** Live pull from team skills GitHub. Maps skill-to-skill calls (YouTube publish orchestrator → titles, thumbnails, descriptions). Ask box recommends skills. New hook tallies skill runs per person (usage bar; cull unused after months; possible year-end recap).
- **How many skills.** Any repeatable online task → a skill. Subprocesses you run alone (titles vs thumbnails) become a chain, not one fat skill. After a Claude/Codex task you’ll repeat: “turn this into a skill.” Self-improvement loop at the bottom of SKILL.md: after each run, propose updates if a step failed, the user corrected something, or a future run would need it.
- **Thin agents, thick skills.** Remy: keep agent instruction files lean; put detail in skills so any harness can execute them. (Transcript also attributes the phrase to “Russ Mike” via ASR; spelling not verified.)
- **Team improvement example:** teammate Harold hit a Resend image-upload error, found a workaround, updated the email-formatting skill; Remy received the update.
- **Sponsorship:** Brex (Greg’s intro). Description also links Late Checkout Agency and The Vibe Marketer.

## Quotes / memorable lines

- “Skills are literally just SOPs for AI.” (Remy)
- “We’re kind of in our Microsoft Word era of skills at the moment.” (Remy)
- “I don’t think people are building enough skills and enough good quality skills.” (Remy)
- Greg: “skill maxie.” Remy agrees; later “thin agents, thick skills.”
- Remy: Claude deleted “my Claude folder with 150 skills with like probably 500 plus hours of work into it and I had no backups.”

## Sources

- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHsftiyT9pQ
- Raw ingest: `raw/youtube-inbox/xHsftiyT9pQ/` (metadata.json, transcript.txt, notes.md, source.url)
- Channel: Greg Isenberg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPjNBjflYl0-HQtUvOx0Ibw
- Guest: Remy / AI with Remy — https://www.aiwithremy.com/ — X https://x.com/remy_gaskell (from video description)
- Description setup link: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/Remy-skills
- Transcript: Supadata v1 mode=native text=true, lang=en, 34053 chars. ASR spellings are not authoritative.

## Related pages

- [[youtube-claude-code-ai-employee]] (same host; Claude Code as an “AI employee” vs team skill distribution)
- [[x-poteto-how-i-use-cursor]] (playbooks / pstack vs markdown SOP skills as a plugin)
- [[hermes-agent]] (Remy mentions Hermes on a VPS as a reason to keep personal skills in the cloud)
- [[grok-bot]] (managed teammates vs a company-owned skills plugin)