Every morning, my system checks if I have any travel that day or the next. If I do, it checks in for my flight automatically. I don’t open an app. I don’t set a reminder. I don’t remember to do it. It just happens.

Not long ago, this required an airline app, a reminder to open it, and two minutes at the right time. That’s what apps gave us — tools to do things, when we remembered to do them.

Skills are different. A skill is a set of instructions given to an AI agent — what to do, when, how. Not an interface to interact with. Not a tool to pick up. An instruction to something that acts.

I have a skill for web check-in. One for my morning brief. One for posting the daily badminton poll. Each of them does something I used to do manually, or used an app to do manually.

Skills are to AI agents what apps are to smartphones. The real difference is deeper: apps helped us do things. Skills get things done.