What to check before you trust a skill from a marketplace
Toby Banks — Founder, Skillzy
The dispatch
New listings, creator interviews, the occasional discount. Every other Friday.
A skill is just instructions you are about to let run against your inbox, your customers, or your money. Before you trust one, read it like you would a contractor’s quote — for five minutes.
Read it, do not just run it
A good skill is boring and legible. If you cannot follow what it does in a plain read, that is not sophistication — it is a risk you cannot see.
Find the stop lines
- Where does it hand back to a human, and is that the right place?
- What does it refuse to do — send money, confirm without a deposit, lodge anything?
- What does it touch, and does that match what it claims to need?
Who built it
The thing worth paying for is that a person did this job, got it wrong, and fixed it. A skill with a named builder who can tell you why it works beats a generated one that only says that it does.
If you write your own, the SKILL.md guide covers the safe shape. If you are buying, every listing here names its builder on purpose.
Featured listingYour first SKILL.md, the right way.
The short version of "how to publish a skill people will actually buy."
Your first SKILL.md, the right way · $9 →Featured listingPatterns for prompts that hold up.
Prompt patterns that survive a model upgrade.
Agent prompt patterns · $24 →Liked this? Get the next one.
Field Notes, every other Friday. No spam.
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