AGENTS.md, Skills, MCP Simplify Agent Workflows

The best part of this piece is that it turns a messy ecosystem into a simple division of labor, which is exactly what local-agent workflows need. AGENTS.md works as repo-local wayfinding, especially when nested files progressively narrow the agent’s scope as it moves deeper into a codebase. Skills are the strongest idea here for repeatable procedures because they keep task-specific workflows out of every prompt and make reuse much easier. MCP is positioned correctly as the live wire to external systems, but it also carries the biggest trust and security burden because every connector widens the attack surface. The guide is less about spec lawyering and more about operator intuition, which makes it useful for onboarding teams that are still figuring out how to structure agentic work.