Improve It with Each Use

20.5. Improve It with Each Use — Improving It with Every Use

Closing the loop: use is not only for using, but for refining

This is the step that completes the cycle, reconnecting with chapter 10.5: a skill is not static after creation — it improves itself through use. Each time a skill is called back and the agent notices a detail that needs adjusting (a missing step, a newly encountered pitfall, a more efficient way of doing it), it can patch the skill in place — the Reuse → Improve loop repeats continuously, not just once.

Not only the agent self-corrects — the user is part of the loop too

The user correcting the agent’s approach (mentioned in 20.3) is itself an input to the improvement loop — every time you give feedback, it is a signal for the related skill (if any) to be updated accordingly, closing the loop between agent behavior and human feedback.

Controlling the speed of improvement via the write-approval gate

As stated in 10.5, in environments that need caution, enable the approval gate so that every change (including small patches in this improvement step) is reviewed before taking effect — most important at this step, because this is where skills in active use are edited, unlike the creation step (20.3) where the risk is still limited to a skill that has never been used.

Notes

• Treat a skill “being improved” as a good sign that you are using the agent enough and deeply enough — if after months an important skill has never been patched once, it may not have been tested through enough real situations yet.
• Periodically review the change history of important skills (via /skills pending if approval is on, or by reading the SKILL.md content directly) — this is also an indirect way to understand what the agent is “learning” about how you work.
• This loop only truly delivers value if you keep reusing old skills instead of letting the agent start over from scratch each time (back to 20.4) — skipping the reuse step means severing the entire improvement loop right here.