One Skill Takes Over: Clashing Agent Skills and a One-File Fix

Key points

• Users install skills from many authors, so two skills for the same job can be active at the same time.1
• We ask what a model does when both skill files are in its context: does it combine their compatible rules, or follow one skill and drop the other?1
• Most outputs show takeover: every rule that only one skill asks for is followed, and every rule that only the other skill asks for is dropped.1
• When each skill file instead ends with one example that follows both skills, takeover falls to 1 to 15% on the six models we tested.1

Sources (1)

• [1]One Skill Takes Over: Clashing Agent Skills and a One-File Fix
  arXiv (AI, ML, NLP, CV, robotics, multi-agent) · Oct 18, 07:11 AM

  Agent Skills are instruction files that tell a coding agent how to do one job.

  Users install skills from many authors, so two skills for the same job can be active at the same time.

Extractive summary: sentences quoted from the sources.