I Thought SKILLs Were a Waste of Tokens Until I Wrote My Own

A developer initially viewed LLM agent SKILLs as token-consuming overhead, preferring MCP for database or Figma access and managing connections to avoid excessive token usage. However, their perspective shifted after creating blueprint4llm. This program was developed to enhance the visualization of LLM-generated plan.md files, which typically produced lengthy text. blueprint4llm expanded Markdown's capabilities by adding support for various formats like PlantUML, draw.io, Figma, and OpenAPI, allowing for richer diagrams and UI prototypes beyond basic tables and Mermaid diagrams.

This developer's experience highlights a common initial skepticism about LLM SKILLs, showing how custom development, unlike off-the-shelf solutions, can reveal their unique value for specific visualization needs.