# Solve First, Then Skill-ify

#concept

## Summary

The core method both HR interviews teach: **don't build a skill speculatively — solve the task with the AI once, correct it until the output is right, then say "now create a skill from this."** The skill freezes a *proven* workflow, not a guess about one.

## Current Understanding

The recurring beginner mistake is writing the skill first and then trying to "shove it somewhere." The working loop is: do your real task through the AI → watch the result → correct it → freeze the final state into a reusable skill. Two trigger heuristics exist in the corpus:

- **Eugene:** turn any correction loop longer than **~3 messages** into a skill.
- **Konstantin:** auto-create a skill after **>5 tool calls** on a task (the [[hermes]] curator variant).

The payoff goes beyond reuse: a packaged skill is a **handoff and de-risking asset** — "a person with not even a third of your HR experience can deliver a decent result," which cuts onboarding and lets the expert take a vacation. This is how [[skills-as-memory]] gets *populated* in practice — the method side of that architecture, and the fix for "don't teach the AI abstractly."

## Evidence

- "You first solve a task with Claude; the moment you reach the final solution, you say — now create a skill from this"; ~3-message heuristic — [[2026-07-14-yulia-interview]].
- Do-the-task-then-freeze framing; skill-as-handoff to a junior hire; vacation/de-risking angle — [[2026-07-14-nina-interview]].
- >5-tool-calls auto-creation heuristic and curator pruning — [[2026-07-14-skills-based-on-git]].
- Skills prescribed specifically as the workaround for cross-session memory loss, and as the constraint on drift — [[2026-07-21-larysa-interview]].

## Related Pages

- Concepts: [[skills-as-memory]] (the architecture this method feeds), [[levels-of-ai-usage]] (skills are the top practical rung), [[personal-ai-operating-system]], [[leave-less-room-for-imagination]] (why a *proven* spec beats a written-ahead one)
- Entities: [[eugene]], [[nina]], [[konstantin]], [[larysa]]

## Contradictions / Uncertainty

- Whether the resulting skill is personal IP or employer work product is unresolved (Eugene vs [[sebastian]]) — [[2026-07-14-nina-interview]].

## Next Questions

- What does a good "create a skill from this" prompt look like — does the corpus contain a concrete example transcript?
- How do the ~3-message and >5-tool-call heuristics compare in practice; is one strictly better for non-programmers?