Guides
Straight answers to the questions founders actually ask about building AI agent systems — agents, skills, tools, and the architecture that makes them compound. Every guide stands alone; together they're the FAST framework field manual.
What Is an AI Agent Factory?
The repeatable system behind agents that compound — agents, skills, and tools as separable parts — and why one-off bots never scale.
What Are AI Agent Skills? The SKILL.md Pattern Explained
Portable markdown files that give any agent domain expertise on demand — how they work, what they contain, and why they beat prompts, custom GPTs, and fine-tuning.
AI Agents vs Automations vs Scripts: What's the Difference?
Scripts execute steps, automations chain triggers, agents reason toward goals. When each is the right call — and how they stack instead of compete.
How to Structure a Library of AI Agent Skills
The five structural decisions that scale a skill library past ten files: business taxonomy, one-job-per-skill, trigger-rich frontmatter, git, and the meta-skill.
How to Give AI Agents Tools Safely
The five-layer tool stack from MCP to human gate, least-privilege credentials, and gating by reversibility — so real access doesn't mean real risk.
Should You Build One AI Agent or a Team of Specialized Agents?
Why specialization lives in skill files, not agents — and the four forcing functions that tell you when it's actually time to split into a fleet.
7 Mistakes Founders Make Building Their First AI Agents
Prompt hoarding, day-one admin access, demo-driven building, platform paralysis — the structural traps that kill first agent projects, and their fixes.
How Long Does It Take to Stand Up a Working AI Agent?
The honest three-layer timeline: an afternoon to working, days to connected, weeks to trusted — and the four self-inflicted reasons it ever takes months.
Reading is scouting. Skills are the territory.
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