If a smart intern can complete a task by following instructions, an AI agent can do it too.
In this highlight from AI on Air, Y Combinator President and CEO Garry Tan shares his perspective: Markdown is code. A skill file is a page of clear, natural-language instructions, and the “compiler” is a language model.
He shows a real example: When a meeting recording comes in, an agent transcribes it and labels the speakers, extracts commitments, owners, and deadlines, and links to existing materials. If it encounters information that conflicts with what’s already known, it flags it rather than overwriting it.
This is no longer just an engineer’s job. YC’s media, events, and finance teams are also writing skill files and scheduled tasks. One colleague in finance used an internal agent to combine around 100 Excel workbooks into a single app.
From doing every step by hand to clearly describing the task and managing agents.
Original source: Y Combinator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRrc1pUY5oU
In this highlight from AI on Air, Y Combinator President and CEO Garry Tan shares his perspective: Markdown is code. A skill file is a page of clear, natural-language instructions, and the “compiler” is a language model.
He shows a real example: When a meeting recording comes in, an agent transcribes it and labels the speakers, extracts commitments, owners, and deadlines, and links to existing materials. If it encounters information that conflicts with what’s already known, it flags it rather than overwriting it.
This is no longer just an engineer’s job. YC’s media, events, and finance teams are also writing skill files and scheduled tasks. One colleague in finance used an internal agent to combine around 100 Excel workbooks into a single app.
From doing every step by hand to clearly describing the task and managing agents.
Original source: Y Combinator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRrc1pUY5oU