Most developers now use coding assistants. I do too—Copilot at work, Claude Code at home. As a developer, I prefer not to repeat myself. This post explains why and how to avoid repetition as a skill.   Don’t Repeat Yourself   The DRY principle has been present in the software development field for ages. The idea is that if you copy and paste code in multiple places and a bug appears, you’ll need to fix the bug in all these places.

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A Java geek

Coding assistants like Copilot and Claude Code benefit from structured instructions, but loading too much context wastes tokens. Agent skills solve this by providing modular instruction sets (SKILL.md files) that are only loaded when relevant, rather than polluting every session's context. Claude Code automatically discovers and invokes skills based on front matter metadata describing when each skill applies. A practical Kotlin skill example is shown, including how to reference cached coding conventions and provide good/bad code examples within the skill file.

Writing an agent skill