# Git-Based Skills — the New Memory of AI Agents (Konstantin, Sber)

#source

> Russian-language source. Summary in English; key terms preserved.

## Source Metadata

- **Date:** talk (year not stated; positions "2026 (now)" and forecasts 2027)
- **Raw path:** `raw/sources/Скиллы на базе git — новая память AI-агентов.md`
- **Source type:** conference talk (conclusions), 53:09 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-NIeMB-Hj8
- **Speaker:** [[konstantin]] (Sber, GigaChat dev team, agent R&D)
- **Ingestion date:** 2026-07-14

## Core Claims

- **Skills + user data + auto-improvement = the new memory of AI agents**, the architecture all agentic systems will converge on. Tools (how to call), data (what you work on), and usage history live together in one **git repo**; the [[harness]] decides what to load into context.
- **Simplicity beats complexity:** a universal agent with ~10 file-ops functions outperforms elaborate multi-agent graphs. The era of **universal agents = [[harness|harnesses]]**.
- Agent tooling evolved **tools → MCP → skills** (see [[evolution-of-agent-tooling]]); skills' two-stage loading lets you keep *hundreds* of skills without blowing context.
- The classic skill is "**von Neumann without data**" — add data + usage history into the same git repo.
- **[[agentic-loops|Agent loops]]** are the next paradigm (forecast: dominant in 2027): inner (ReAct) → outer (Ralph) → meta.

## Key Evidence / Details

- **Harness = harness/upness metaphor:** LLM = the force, tools = the harness, data = the field; the LLM "pulls the tools across the data space." Different tasks, *same* processing method. Standard toolset ~30–40 max (Read/Edit/Write, Bash, Grep/Glob/WebSearch, TodoWrite, subagent spawn); >100 tools = even Fable 5 gets confused. See [[harness]].
- **Human role evolution:** prompt-engineer → context-engineer → harness-builder → **loop-engineer** (CI/CD, back-pressure, meta-loops). See [[context-as-scarce-resource]].
- **Hackathon proof:** 19 of 20 top teams at BitGen built on harnesses; his own harness placed 7th (Interpress-Ex, run in an infinite loop over a weekend — *read zero tasks by eye*) and 3rd overall / 1st on technical metrics (Snowbase, leaked Claude Code as backend).
- **tools → MCP → skills:** Tools (2022–24) each consume context; MCP (Anthropic, late-2024→25) adds ready tools via protocol but many servers = dozens of tools = context blowout + network-load security risk (he doesn't hate MCP; issues largely solved). **Skills (2025→)** = directory + gentleman's agreement: `SKILL.md` + tools + (his proposal) **data**. Two-stage loading: short description always in system prompt; long description loaded only when the agent enters the dir. Hermes grew 56 → 100 skills and still works. Cost: MCP needs a developer; a skill needs someone who can write text (any language). Claude Code turns MCP into skills, erasing most MCP downsides. See [[skills-as-memory]] and [[evolution-of-agent-tooling]].
- **Why git:** skill-first (many agents on one skill — Claude Code, Hermes via Telegram, OpenClaude anywhere) · CI/CD integration · team sharing · merge-conflict resolution now done by models (parallel actors on bare git, no transactional DB — "not for payments, but for much else, yes"). **Mandatory AGENTS.md rules:** `git pull` at start, `push`+`commit` at end, **CI as back-pressure** (returns a drifting agent to spec).
- **His daily skills (with data):** DNA/medicine (~100 GB sequencing for the whole family; Claude analyzed an undescribed mutation, found the gene, called **AlphaFold**, rendered the protein, concluded the fold is fine — own full genome for ~$1000 and an evening vs $3B/13 yrs historically) · recommendations (~1000 ratings) · trip planning (photo a ticket in Telegram → agent git-pulls, files the PDF, commits; "hotel not booked, 2-hr layover — don't even try") · HR/résumé scoring (self-corrected over 10–20 feedback iterations to ~10% error) · finance · team agent-R&D.
- **Auto-improvement (Hermes):** >5 tool calls on a task → candidate skill. Curator: prune unused at 30 days (deactivate) / 90 days (archive); consolidate pairs weekly so short-descriptions don't eat context. Memory is now skills, not RAG-extracted facts.
- **Agent loops:** inner = ReAct. **Outer/Ralph loop** (Geoffrey Huntley): `while true; do claude -p "solve" || true; done` — runs for days, stays in the **"smart zone"** (first ~⅓ of context) avoiding summarization decay. **Meta loop** (his own): periodically wipe all agent-created data to an unseen archive and restart, dodging Karpathy's **collapse** (same solution reworded) — good for research tasks.
- **Auto-agent result:** weak GigaChat went from **1/89 → 11/89** benchmark tasks over a weekend of self-improvement (11× gain, verified no overfit). Idea from Karpathy's "autoagent."
- **Missing piece:** perception / qualia (the "walk vs drive to the car wash" example); maybe world-models — open question.

## Connections

- **Entity:** [[konstantin]] · tools: [[claude-code]], [[hermes]], Codex CLI, OpenClaude, Cursor, Conductor, AlphaFold
- **Concepts:** [[skills-as-memory]] · [[harness]] · [[evolution-of-agent-tooling]] · [[agentic-loops]] · [[context-as-scarce-resource]]
- **Timeline:** [[ai-agent-evolution]]
- **Related sources:** [[2026-07-14-gap-between-ai-users-irreversible]] (skills = markdown folders; strong overlap) · [[2026-07-14-sebastian-eugene-interview]] (harness, BYO-harness) · [[2026-07-14-everything-we-knew-about-software-has-changed]] (orchestration era, markdown-as-service)

## Open Questions

- What data belongs in a skill, and is there an upper limit? (No standards yet; he loads 200 GB in one skill, 100 KB in another — "haven't found the ceiling.")
- How do you build world-models / give agents perception? (Open.)
- Are the pruning windows (30/90 days) and the >5-tool-call threshold generalizable, or Hermes-specific heuristics? Status: tentative.

## Change Impact on Wiki

- Created [[skills-as-memory]], [[agentic-loops]], [[evolution-of-agent-tooling]]; contributed heavily to [[harness]] and [[context-as-scarce-resource]].
- Added entities [[konstantin]] and [[hermes]]; extended [[claude-code]].
- Extended the [[ai-agent-evolution]] timeline with the tools→MCP→skills and loop generations.
