In 1986, John Carroll and colleagues published "The Minimal Manual", which described an approach to user documentation that broke everything down into cross-referenced single-page descriptions of specific skills (including common errors and how to recover from them). Forty years later, we are reinventing their ideas as agent skill files. https://github.com/marimo-team/skills https://dib-lab.github.io/DIBSI-instructor-training/files/papers/carroll-minimal-manual-1987.pdf
Greg Wilson
@gvwilson@mastodon.social
I program, write, and teach. Co-founder of Software Carpentry and It Will Never Work in Theory; co-editor of The Architecture of Open Source Applications.
mastodon.social
Greg Wilson
@gvwilson@mastodon.social
I program, write, and teach. Co-founder of Software Carpentry and It Will Never Work in Theory; co-editor of The Architecture of Open Source Applications.
mastodon.social
@gvwilson@mastodon.social
·
Feb 13, 2026
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