Instead of complex SDKs or custom code, users can extend tools like Cowork by writing simple Markdown files called "Skills." These files guide the AI's behavior, making customization accessible to a broader audience and proving highly effective with powerful models.

Agentic coding tools like Claude Code represent a new, distinct modality of AI interaction, as significant as the advent of image generation or chatbots. This shift is creating a new category of power users who integrate AI into their daily workflows not just for queries, but for proactive, complex task execution.

Structure your AI automations architecturally. Create specialized sub-agents, each with a discrete 'skill' (e.g., scraping Twitter). Your main OpenClaw agent then acts as an orchestrator, calling these skilled sub-agents as needed. This frees up the main agent and creates a modular, powerful system.

AI agents like OpenClaw learn via "skills"—pre-written text instructions. While functional, this method is described as "janky" and a workaround. It exposes a core weakness of current AI: the lack of true continual learning. This limitation is so profound that new startups are rethinking AI architecture from scratch to solve it.

The key skill for building is shifting from mastering no-code tools like Webflow and Zapier to working with AI agents. This represents a new programmable layer of abstraction where proficiency is defined by prompting, context management, and systems thinking for AI, not visual development.

In this software paradigm, user actions (like button clicks) trigger prompts to a core AI agent rather than executing pre-written code. The application's behavior is emergent and flexible, defined by the agent's capabilities, not rigid, hard-coded rules.

The process of building AI tools is becoming automated. Claude features a 'Skill Creator,' a skill that builds other skills from natural language prompts. This meta-capability allows users to generate custom AI workflows without writing code, essentially asking the AI to build the exact tool they need for a task.

AI agents like OpenClaw dramatically lower the barrier to creating software. Founders with no prior coding experience can now build complex applications simply by issuing conversational commands, effectively making software development feel 'free' and accessible to anyone with an idea.

A new software paradigm, "agent-native architecture," treats AI as a core component, not an add-on. This progresses in levels: the agent can do any UI action, trigger any backend code, and finally, perform any developer task like writing and deploying new code, enabling user-driven app customization.