Six months ago, “How to write good prompts” was the hottest topic in the group chat. Now, this question is obviously outdated. What has replaced prompts is Skills.
The most obvious turning point, of course, is the appearance of OpenClaw.
Even if you can say it’s copied, it isn’t an agent’s original invention. But it truly brought the concept of an agent into the mainstream—closer to the kind of AI you’ve seen in movies: it has personality, remembers things, makes plans, and can really get the job done for you, not just answer your questions.
In the past, when people used AI, at its core they were still using a very smart search engine—you ask, it answers, and the next round starts again. Agents stretch that line. It will proactively move the task forward; when it hits obstacles, it reroutes; after completing one step, it moves to the next. The first time you really see it handle an entire piece of work end-to-end, you get a strange feeling: this thing is really working for me.
Then people started thinking: how can we make it more capable.
That’s the real reason Skills took off. It’s not because Skills themselves are that new, but because agents made people seriously think about this question for the first time. What Skills do is to equip an agent with specialized capabilities.
Why are Skills so important now?
An agent without Skills is like a smart newcomer who hasn’t learned anything. When you ask it to do financial analysis, it thinks, but moves slowly, is prone to mistakes, and many steps still require you to guide it hand by hand. Skills are like having it learn the complete workflow for that domain in advance—so it can come in and get started right away, without you needing to repeatedly correct it.
The most widely circulated Skills in the community right now are concentrated in a few directions: workflow automation—turning operations that used to bounce back and forth between multiple tools into a chain that an agent can run end-to-end on its own; injecting domain-specific rules—so when an agent is working on high-precision tasks like legal, medical, or financial work, it won’t just improvise; personalized adaptation—tuning the agent to your most comfortable way of working, remembering your preferences, language style, and judgment criteria; of course, there’s also another category of Skills that’s related to money, like trading.
The arbitrage opportunities on Polymarket—ordinary people can’t make sense of the order book, and they don’t have time to watch price movements to calculate spreads. But an agent with specialized Skills can: monitor in real time, identify deviations, judge whether to enter the position, and run the whole process—no forecasting-market background knowledge required.
Quant trading is the same. In the past, this was the domain of investment banks and hedge funds—it required writing strategy code, integrating with APIs, and keeping an eye on backtest data. Now, someone packages the entire workflow into Skills; once the agent has them installed, it can start executing strategies on exchanges. The barrier has shifted from “knowing how to code and understanding finance” to “knowing how to install Skills.”
This change isn’t about making people lazy—it’s about pushing the boundaries of capability outward.
Behind these needs, there’s a common logic: people are starting to treat agents as long-term collaborators, not as tools you use and then shut off.
So, what new idea do you have that you want to turn into your agent’s skill?
Before, you had an idea, but once you found a market gap, you couldn’t get it off the ground. You couldn’t code, didn’t have time to learn, outsourced work was expensive and slow—so in the end that idea just rotted in a memo. Now it’s different. With vibe coding, you can directly turn your idea into a Skills—no need to build a website, no need to make an app, no need for a server, no need to maintain a team.
The underlying logic here is: agents will be a must-have for everyone. The Skills you build don’t need to acquire users themselves—they naturally run on the agents that everyone is already using. The market is there, the channel is there; you just need to build the thing that other people haven’t done yet.
In the past, there was a technical team separating “I have a good idea” from “I have a working product.” Now that distance has been compressed into a single weekend.
To make more great skills visible, Lydown BlockBeats partnered with Zhihu to host a thematic event in Hong Kong on April 21, titled “Decrypting Web 4.0: When AI Agents Take Over On-Chain Permissions.”
Scan the QR code or click here to register for skills
At this event supported by Wanxiang Blockchain and the HKUST Business School, top industry leaders will share their unique perspectives. We’ll discuss the potential of an “Agent autonomous economy,” the necessity of on-chain automation, and the new financial models brought by agents.
At the same time, we’ve also invited high-quality Skills teams in tracks like making money through trading and changing payment habits. When it comes to the flow of funds, it’s the top priority that everyone wants Agent to make money. These Skills demos will show us the most cutting-edge financial transformations so far—let’s see which ones can change our everyday habits and ways of thinking.
Now, we want your skills to be seen as well.
You can click here to register and submit your skills link. If you’re also in Hong Kong during the “Hong Kong Web3 Carnival” event, you’ll have the opportunity to present it on-site at our Hong Kong event to all attendees. Registration link
If you’ve built a truly useful Skills and want more people to see it, you can register now.
Registration link: https://bbzx2018.feishu.cn/share/base/form/shrcnVbh5sSWAY1yMSex7RXBCLh
Click to learn about Lydown BlockBeats recruiting positions
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