Progressive disclosure is a well-known principle in UX design. This principle is about showing users only what they need right now, and revealing more options or information gradually as they interact or gain context. The goal is to reduce cognitive load, keep interfaces clean and approachable, and still support advanced use cases when needed. The principle of progressive disclosure can be applied not only to the user interfaces we design, but also AI tools we use.
Skills, or Agent Skills for jargon maximalists, offer a way to instill Claude with specific knowledge that it may not possess in its distillation of training data. Anthropic has already deployed a few of them within Claude to handle common tasks like creating spreadsheets or presentations. Now, paying Claude customers - not the freeloader tier - can create Skills that suit their specific needs. Just make sure to subtract the labor that went into creating them when tabulating time saved by AI.