# The Downsides of Agentic Skills

DevFeed: [The Downsides of Agentic Skills](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-downsides-of-agentic-skills-37925.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://newsletter.jorgecastillo.dev/p/the-downsides-of-agentic-skills>)

Author: Jorge Castillo

Published: 2026-05-17T14:18:52Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Effective Android](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/effective-android.md>)

Topics: [context](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/context.md>), [Tech Debt](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tech-debt.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [Testing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/testing.md>)

Tags: [agentic](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agentic.md>), [context](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/context.md>), [evals](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/evals.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [tech-debt](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tech-debt.md>), [testing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/testing.md>)

## AI overview

The article discusses tradeoffs of using agentic skills in production projects, including context costs, fuzzy triggering, nondeterministic behavior, harder testing, technical debt, and a growing permission surface.

## Source excerpt

Skills are seductive.