Claude Code Helsinki · Meetup #4May 2026

SKILLS,
BOTH KINDS

Stop writing docs.
Start writing skills.
Ivana Pesic · CPO @
The framework02
Team knowledge lives in three layers
Layer 1In heads
Tacit · Fragile
Layer 2 · BROKENIn docs
Stale · Unread
Layer 3In skills
Executable · Shared
Skip the
broken
layer
Most teams move knowledge from Layer 1 to Layer 2 and call it documentation.
The teams that win move it straight to Layer 3.
The provocation03

Layer 2 has always been broken.

†
R.I.P.
/wiki
2019 — 2023
"We will update it next sprint"
— last edited 847 days ago
The move04

Take what is in one person's head.
Put it directly into a skill.

Layer 1
In one head
→
Layer 3
In a skill
Don't write the wiki.  Write the skill.
Every team has one05
Your Layer 1 person
  • The senior engineer who knows your API conventions.
  • The security person nobody can ship without.
  • The data engineer who knows where the bodies are buried.
  • The designer — that was me.
Let me show you two real ones from our team.
Case 1 · Design system06
Case 1 · The designer problem

Every PR waited for me.
The taste was in my head.

Designer (me) · L1
Primary or secondary button?
Is this spacing right?
Which token for this border?
Should this be a card or a tile?
What about dark mode?
Why is this hover different?
Case 1 · What we encoded07

From design system (L2) → custom org skill (L3)

skills/design-system/SKILL.md
name: design-system description: "Apply the team's tokens, components, and edge-case rules to every PR — automatically." allowed-tools: [Read, Edit, Grep] --- # When to use this skill Every UI change. No exceptions. Don't reinvent tokens. # The rules that used to live in my head
- Primary button = action that moves the user forward - Secondary = parallel action (cancel ≠ secondary) - Border tokens never come from neutrals; always semantic - 16px is the rhythm; 24px breaks sections, 8px is a mistake
# The exceptions
- Modals: tighten by 4px (denser context) - Dark mode: invert --surface, never --accent - Edge case: the help button is --accent-2, not primary
# Why these choices
[ ...the reasoning, so the skill can defend a call ]
Case 1 · Outcome08
Case 1 · Bottleneck removed

A new dev joins on Monday.
By Wednesday, their first PR is on-brand.

Monday
New dev starts
Has never met me.
Reads SKILL.md.
Tuesday
First feature
Claude applies the skill.
No design questions.
Wednesday
PR is on-brand
Reviewer signs as author.
I am not in the loop.
I scaled myself out of being a bottleneck.
Living in Layer 309
Everything changes
Sprints
Epic · 3 people · 2 weeks
→ Task · 1 person · 2 days
Documentation
Prose nobody updates
→ Machine-readable for both
Changelog
The senior dev's chore
→ Everyone, as we go
Tests
After the fact
→ Before you prompt
The non-negotiable10
TESTS. TESTS. TESTS.
Without them, you are not engineering. You are praying.
The one rule11

THE REVIEWER
IS THE AUTHOR.

There is no "Claude wrote it" clause in code review.
There is no clause. There is only the author.
Your name here
Signed at PR merge
Case 2 · Quality indicators12
Case 2 · Same pattern, different domain

There is no unit test that says "this is good."

? ? ?
information_quality = 0.72 — good enough to ship?
Scorecard left-only nodes — gaps, or junk?
Signal class "Emerging" — real trend or noise?
word_count drop — source feed or real change?
→ Same move as the design system. A skill reads the JSON, writes the interpretation, the team inherits it.
Your team, mapped13

Your sprint, by where the skill lives.

SKILLS, BOTH KINDS — encoded + human, working together
Code gen
Scaffold
Refactor
Code
review
Debug
hard bugs
Problem
framing
Test
stubs
Doc
gen
Design
system
API
integration
Architecture
Trade-offs
Boilerplate
Migrations
QA
interpret
PR
triage
Stakeholder
trust
Taste
Encoded in skills · non-human
Shared · human + AI via skill
Deeply human · irreducible
The structural observation14
Same record
SKILL.md
name:
description:
allowed-tools:
[ body ]
source_url:
=====
Résumé
Name
Professional summary
Skills & competencies
Experience
LinkedIn URL
Not a metaphor. The same record.
Where this goes15
The skill catalog isn't a directory of files.
IT'S A LABOR POOL.
The dev teams that see that first are the ones designing the next decade of work.
Thank you16
Stop writing docs.
Start writing skills.
Spend one sprint moving what your seniors know into Layer 3.
It will pay back the entire year.
Ivana Pesic · CPO @ · linkedin.com/in/ipesic
Speaker notes · slide 1
← →  N=notes 1 / 19