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Why Skills And MCP Are Apples And Oranges?
Posted Sep 17, 2026 | Views 14
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Speakers
Ola Hungerford
Principal Engineer for AI Enablement @ Nordstrom
Ola Hungerford is a Principal Engineer supporting AI Enablement at Nordstrom and a Maintainer and Community Lead for the Model Context Protocol. Her technical background spans over two decades, from early web platforms to personalization systems, enterprise architecture, and modern AI/ML systems. She's also a vocalist and songwriter who explores how technology can augment human creativity.
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Demetrios Brinkmann
Chief Happiness Engineer @ MLOps Community
At the moment Demetrios is immersing himself in Machine Learning by interviewing experts from around the world in the weekly MLOps.community meetups. Demetrios is constantly learning and engaging in new activities to get uncomfortable and learn from his mistakes. He tries to bring creativity into every aspect of his life, whether that be analyzing the best paths forward, overcoming obstacles, or building lego houses with his daughter.
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SUMMARY
Tool descriptions tell an agent what a tool does. They don't tell it how to use five tools together, in the right order, following your conventions. That gap is where this conversation lives.
Filmed at AGNTCon + MCPCon in Tokyo with Ola Hungerford, Principal Engineer for AI Enablement at Nordstrom and a maintainer of the Model Context Protocol, who spent the last several months turning a pattern everyone was quietly reinventing into an actual MCP extension.
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CONTENT & TRANSCRIPT
Demetrios: [00:00:00] All right. I am here with Ola working on AI enablement at Nordstrom as a principal engineer. Let's get into this conversation
Demetrios: What are you working on at Nordstrom's?
Ola Hungerford: I work with the AI enablement team, so, uh, supporting, you know, uh, basically anyone working with our AI tools, AI dev tools, uh, agent platform.
Demetrios: Well, this is a perfect segue into Skills over MCP.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah.
Demetrios: Can you tell me a little bit about it? Because I'm vaguely familiar with it, and what I understand is that you just- it's a skill that tells you how to use an MCP server.
Ola Hungerford: Uh, yeah, that's, that's one use case for it. Okay. So a lot of times, like you said, if, if you have a set of tools and you wanna use them for a specific task or follow, let's say, [00:01:00] like, you know, your conventions, it's natural to create a skill so that it'll do it correctly every time. And sometimes when there's multiple tools that work together, you know, you also wanna orchestrate them that way.
Demetrios: Uh-huh.
Ola Hungerford: And so the idea is that instead of having to necessarily have, like, a separate, um, channel that you use for distributing the skills for that purpose, you know, to work with certain servers, you can just distribute them using, you know, a single channel, which is the MCP server.
Demetrios: So it's
Ola Hungerford: like- Or just use it as a distribution- Ah
Ola Hungerford: method.
Demetrios: So it's built into the MCP server itself, like, "Hey, if you wanna do XYZ-
Ola Hungerford: Yeah ...
Demetrios: grab this skill," and then you do it through this MCP server?
Ola Hungerford: Yeah, that's, that's kind of the, I wanna say, like, the main use case that we've been talking about.
Demetrios: Hmm.
Ola Hungerford: Which is, like, you know, we... Like, I've written about using, uh, server instructions for similar- Yeah
Ola Hungerford: use cases, which is, like, you can, you know, describe, like, certain workflows or you could even point to certain skills from, uh, server [00:02:00] instructions. But for things that are more verbose or complicated or conditional, or if you don't know if server instructions are necessarily gonna be initialized, or if you want to change them more dynamically, then it makes more sense to have probably, like, skills on the server that get triggered, um- You know, are activated when you actually want them to be available
Demetrios: Mm-hmm.
Demetrios: And I'm realizing now as you say that, this is so much better than me having to need all of these skills and only use them when I go and ping out to an MCP server, because I'm not sure if I'm ever going to go and hit that MCP server, and it would just be great if when I hit that MCP server, there was almost like this set of instructions- Yeah
Demetrios: that said, "Hey, here we go," like, "I have this for you, and this is how you can, uh, take advantage of it."
Ola Hungerford: Yeah.
Demetrios: And y- so you said there, that was one use case. [00:03:00] There's others?
Ola Hungerford: I think, well, I think you can also think about it almost just like a way to distribute knowledge. So you know, I think kind of flipping it around a little bit, um, you might have knowledge that you wanna distribute through skills that only gets like, you know, triggered in certain situations.
Demetrios: Hmm.
Ola Hungerford: And so I think just even that is valuable in itself because then you can still apply, like if you have, wherever you have your MCP infrastructure, you can also use that for distributing You know, just skills in general, even if you don't have to use them with a set of tools.
Demetrios: Oh.
Ola Hungerford: Um, so I think that sometimes, you know, you might have like a vector database or something, like a knowledge base.
Ola Hungerford: Um, but then more and more people are just creating like directories of files .
Demetrios: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ola Hungerford: Or even using that for their memory, um, you know, personal memory or, or just their agent memory. So I think it's another form of like memory and preferences that you can [00:04:00] distribute through, uh, an MCP server as well.
Demetrios: I think I got lost there with the directory of files and how that relates to like an MCP server and how you like merge those two worlds. 'Cause I... If I'm understanding this correctly, it's almost like, hey, there's this distribution mechanism which is your MCP server, and you can hit the MCP server and get the skills that you need, uh, instead of having to have like a whole another GitHub for skills or like a skills repository where you can search through them all.
Demetrios: Is that a correct understanding of it?
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. Yeah, and I think what I mean by folders is really like the way that skills work is through this kind of progressive discovery mechanism. Uh-huh. So you only load what you need to load, you know, for a task or a certain situation. And so I think a lot of times people are, let's say, just creating notes and, you know, knowledge repositories, or doing like [00:05:00] LLM wikis and things like that.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. And they only really wanna fetch that, you know, personal knowledge or memory, you know, using a similar pattern. And so I think just following that general pattern, being able to do that, um, with resources is really useful. And then Skills just gives you a standard way for the agent to know, like to understand how to find them and how to progressively load them.
Demetrios: Mm-hmm. And now what was the inspiration behind creating this?
Ola Hungerford: Oh, between... Like for this extension- Yeah ... specifically? Well, I was trying to kind of s- solve that problem of like how do I have the skills and tools live together -
Demetrios: Mm-hmm ...
Ola Hungerford: in various ways. And you know, I, I, I think a lot of people have done things with like, uh, server instructions, um, you know, custom tools, things like that.
Ola Hungerford: But then the interesting thing is like- I kept discovering that more and more people were kind of following a very [00:06:00] similar pattern-
Demetrios: Mm-hmm ...
Ola Hungerford: uh, for solving this problem. Um, and so I just thought it was really kind of interesting to keep pulling at thread. And then there was just, like, so much interest in it.
Ola Hungerford: There was just, like, so much momentum behind it, and then all these people kind of were saying like, "Oh, actually we're, we're doing a version of this." You know, at, like, sometimes as, like, at a very large scale, like, you know, at an enterprise level. And so I think it was just really very motivating to try to, um, take that, like, opportunity to standardize something, you know, people are already doing and have a lot of interest in.
Ola Hungerford: But that, I think, makes a lot of sense too, because, like, skills are very simple. That's kind of the point. Mm-hmm.
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: Is they're very ... Like, they're just files that someone can create and edit. And so I think ha- having that option, um, you know, alongside more programmatic stuff, like writing code for tools, is just really, uh, accessible, too, for people.
Demetrios: Yeah. So then it [00:07:00] became an extension, right? And then
Ola Hungerford: it's- It's ... Yeah. I mean, it's, it's almost, it's almost an extension. Right. It's, uh, it's been kind of in a draft status for a while. Uh-huh. And then now it's been accepted, and then, um, we're kind of doing the last finishing touches to, uh, make it final so that it's actually, like, an official, like, released, uh, MCP extension.
Demetrios: And you've mentioned that there was a lot of people that are using this at scale or using, like, this in some way.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. And- Uh, either doing something extremely similar-
Demetrios: Uh-huh ...
Ola Hungerford: or, um, you know, even implementing, like, the actual, uh, extension itself, like, even as it was changing, which was was always interesting-
Ola Hungerford: because there'll be people who are like, "We totally were an early adopter." Um, but then, you know, obviously things change, so-
Demetrios: It breaks.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah ... it's been really useful. But then I al- I also feel really bad because I'm like, "Uh-oh," like, "We're totally changing- Yeah ... this one [00:08:00] very important thing." APIs. But, I mean, that's always how it is, right?
Ola Hungerford: It's like- Yeah ... I, I think it's been a pretty good balance of people who were, you know, being interested and adventurous early on- Mm-hmm ... um, and then saying like, "Okay, we want ... Like, before we really f- open the flood gates, we wanna make sure that this is actually what we want."
Demetrios: And what are some things that when you were going out there and talking to folks who were using it, they told you about, like, how they were doing it, and then it
Demetrios: You then incorporated that back into what you're building?
Ola Hungerford: Um, I think one of the bigger ones was kind of how do you- Like h- how do you wanna handle the, like things like the front matter and custom front matter that's already kind of ... It's, it's part of the agent skill spec. It's not part of the MCP spec- Mm
Ola Hungerford: which is something else we had wanted to think about, which is like what really do we wanna solve in MCP versus delegate to [00:09:00] the agent skill spec, 'cause we didn't wanna start creating an MCP- A version ... version of skills versus- Yeah ... skills version of skills. We wanted to keep that like, you know, um, aligned.
Ola Hungerford: So- Concurrent,
Demetrios: yeah.
Ola Hungerford: In line Yeah. So-
Demetrios: Totally '
Ola Hungerford: Cause, um, so, so anyway, so a lot of people are doing things with, uh, custom metadata in the front- the skills front matter.
Demetrios: Mm-hmm.
Ola Hungerford: And so something that is part of the spec is that we're just re- you know, passing through that, that front matter, um, when you actually, um, list all the skills in the server.
Ola Hungerford: So, you know, it's like we're not dictating how people ... Like, w- what special metadata goes in there yet. But we're saying like, okay, there is like, um, you can have MCP specific metadata if you want to.
Demetrios: Mm-hmm.
Ola Hungerford: You know, because you can use the meta, you know, kind of attributes to, to include c- whatever customization you wanna do.
Ola Hungerford: But it's kind of something where I think we probably made it, that part more, a little more open-ended. [00:10:00] Um, but then had to make sure that people knew that, uh, someone couldn't do like a rug pull and like, you know- Ah ... change things behind the scenes because if you're just passing through this information, um, you don't wanna have it be something where it's like, okay, now, now I'm just opening myself up for, uh, like prompt injection or whatever.
Demetrios: Mm-hmm.
Ola Hungerford: You know, malicious-
Demetrios: Activity ...
Ola Hungerford: activities. Yeah.
Demetrios: In any manner, yeah. New surface area- Yeah ... for
Ola Hungerford: attack. 'Cause it's just like, I think it's just raised a lot of the same concerns that people always have, uh, with, you know, untrusted contexts. Yeah Or just, you know, contexts coming f- through MCP.
Demetrios: Yeah. And you did mention about this metadata that right now you're not specifically forcing folks to add or leave out anything or just like build it in any way.
Demetrios: Do you feel like that will happen [00:11:00] eventually?
Ola Hungerford: I think there are things in the Agent Skills spec that do need to be kind of more kind of formalized in some way. But I don't think that there are things that MCP needs to like dictate, but I think that like MCP is ins- like we're like incentivized, like people using MCP are incentivized to, uh, do that, you know, to help that make that happen, um, with skills because otherwise that is kind of a very, I don't know, it's, it's very open-ended on purpose.
Ola Hungerford: Mm-hmm. But it also, uh, is something I think that could... There's, there's some things that could be standardized a little more.
Demetrios: So that's not necessarily on the skills over MCP piece, it's more on the MCP itself?
Ola Hungerford: Well, it's more, it's more on the skills, it's more on the skills side-
Demetrios: Oh,
Ola Hungerford: okay ... I think.
Demetrios: Yeah. Yeah.
Demetrios: It's almost like you're battling with two gigantic beasts that you're... Or you're like- You have these [00:12:00] two ways that are very well adopted and that have opinions, and then you're marrying those worlds, right? Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: And so... Yeah, I think of more it's almost more like, you know, like a friendly Venn diagram.
Demetrios: Yeah. I
Ola Hungerford: was- But I think like, I think it's interesting 'cause I feel like- I chose
Demetrios: violence, you chose artistic. I like that. I think- Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: Uh, I, I think the thing with skills though is that like, I feel like a lot of it has tried not to be super opinionated- Mm-hmm ... in terms of like what isn't already specified, so I think that's kind of more just, it's like different approaches, right?
Ola Hungerford: Because MCP is very, it's like, it's a protocol, it's structured, it's, you know... Um, I think the, the way that is designed is just a little different, right, from, from how, how skills work.
Demetrios: Mm-hmm. And when I heard you talking with our friend Raul earlier, you were mentioning that [00:13:00] there's different personas?
Ola Hungerford: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: So I think this is one of the ways that he was talking about using skills, which is... He was talking about it almost like skills as, uh, sub-agents, right? Yeah. As like a way to- Do different agent personas or different customer personas or whatever you're trying to, um-
Demetrios: Emulate or
Ola Hungerford: simulate ... you know, emulate or, or, or customize, you know, for s- wh- whatever you're trying to do with an agent.
Ola Hungerford: Um, which I think makes sense. I think sometimes in the working group we've talked about how, you know, you can almost define like skills like s- as being sub-agents in some ways. Mm-hmm. But the one thing there that actually relates back to the skills spec is, um, you know, how do you define which server, like which dependencies it has?
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. Like what servers it depends on, which is something that the way that different, [00:14:00] you know, harnesses have implemented sub-agents, they'll have some conventions around that or, you know, configuration around that. But in skills there's no like universal standard way to do that yet, which is like defining your dependencies.
Demetrios: Uh-huh. Because it's at the harness level.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah, because it's just something that's been kind of solved, you know, you have different- On a different- ... different clients doing it different ways.
Demetrios: Yeah. Yeah. So then that adds a little bit of like confusion of the abstraction layers?
Ola Hungerford: Yeah, I think it's, I think it's just a point of like where it starts to get more fragmented.
Demetrios: Mm-hmm.
Ola Hungerford: Um, and that's kind of what I mean by like some things seem like they should be, you know, formalized in some way. Like okay with, you know, the way we specify dependencies.
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: But, uh, but again, it's like I think that's a little harder to do, uh, there because [00:15:00] it's, yeah, it's just, it's, it's kinda designed differently.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. I guess. I keep using that phrase, but- That's fine ... but it's, it's definitely a very, like the, the two things side by side, it's a very like apples and oranges-
Demetrios: Hmm ...
Ola Hungerford: kind of thing.
Demetrios: Yeah. And you're giving a talk here, right?
Ola Hungerford: Yeah.
Demetrios: About?
Ola Hungerford: Oh, about skills over MCP.
Demetrios: Is there anything that you say in that talk that you haven't told us already?
Ola Hungerford: Well, I guess I haven't talked much about like the actual mechanisms of like how, or like how, you know, the extension works. I kind of mentioned some things here and there, but I guess the simplest version is there's a way to list all the skills on a server.
Demetrios: Mm-hmm.
Ola Hungerford: Um, and then there's, you know, a way to fetch them, and basically the way to fetch them is just to read a resource the way you would read any other MCP resource.
Ola Hungerford: Um, but the other [00:16:00] interesting side of that is that kind of, you know, that implies that the harness lets the model fetch a resource that it needs-
Demetrios: Mm-hmm ...
Ola Hungerford: which is something that not all harnesses do yet, but that the more and more we dug into it, the m- like we realized like, oh, there actually are a lot of agent harnesses that already do this.
Ola Hungerford: And so really the gap between implementing this extension and what harness is already doing is probably very small.
Demetrios: Hmm.
Ola Hungerford: Um, it's more about, um, implementing the specific way of listing skills and also making sure that, you know, you're actually, uh, have, have some kind of consent mechanism around, uh, skills based on kind of like their, like is it actually the skill that I, uh, listed, you know?
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. A lot of kind of more, um, I wanna say like the, that part of it I think can get a little more complicated because I'm not really sure, you know, there's, there's a [00:17:00] lot of ways that things already get loaded very easily-
Demetrios: Hmm ...
Ola Hungerford: by agents, and so I'm not sure how much like putting purposeful friction in, like how if that's something that, you know, a lot of-
Demetrios: You stop that
Ola Hungerford: a lot of people are already doing. Oh. It's kind of like that part I haven't dug as much into. So I think it'll be interesting to see if like this whole kind of consent model of how you're actually verifying the integrity and then making sure that, um, you know, what you're exposing is something you've already kind of consented to use is something that clients are already doing with file-based skills-
Demetrios: Yeah
Ola Hungerford: because they've started to do things like optimize, um, how skills are loaded, uh, into context and things like that.
Demetrios: Well, the thing that I will finish up with is where do you see skills over MCP going?
Ola Hungerford: I think [00:18:00] that- Hopefully there'll be more action around how do we solve for things like, like the general progressive discovery pattern-
Demetrios: Mm-hmm
Ola Hungerford: things like that, um, for MCP in general. And I think that will also affect, like, how practical it is to actually have hundreds of skills on a server. Mm-hmm. Because right now, I'll be honest that if you just implemented this and so the, the, um, MCP hosts, I think you'd start to run into that problem that people started to have, like, um, Ruben from, uh, Postman mentioned, which is like- The
Demetrios: bloat
Ola Hungerford: "MCP sucks." Mm. "Why is it so bad? Why... Like, all I did was cram 200 tools in a context- ... and it's terrible." And you're like- It's not working ... "Oh, yeah, that was predictable." And I think, like, it's just because people haven't maybe, like, um, you know, I think the interaction, the thing that we could probably be a little clear [00:19:00] about is, upfront about is like, what is the expected, um, way or just maybe some ways to handle that.
Ola Hungerford: Mm. Like, I think there's some very simple ways to handle it, but from what I've seen so far, even for file-based skills, people are doing lots of different things, and they're not necessarily handling, like, them the same way as tools, right? Because they're integrated sometimes very differently-
Demetrios: Yeah ... and
Ola Hungerford: invoked differently.
Ola Hungerford: So I think that'll be the part where if there's more consistency around how to progressively discover and make, you know, MCP stuff available in context, then I think, um... Or how, you know, patterns, things like that, then I think that will make it a lot more, uh useful, even more useful, right? Outside of like, you know, being very careful you know.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah, well- Yeah ...
Demetrios: I look at it like we are [00:20:00] still exploring. We didn't know how things would work, so obviously the first thing that you do is like, "How far can we push this?"
Ola Hungerford: Yeah.
Demetrios: And then you realize, eh, not that far.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah,
Demetrios: yeah. We might need to step it back for a minute.
Ola Hungerford: Exactly, yeah.
Demetrios: And so it's hard to like standardize something when we don't even know yet what the best way of doing it is.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah.
Demetrios: And-
Ola Hungerford: Well, and also how people will actually use things, right? Yeah. I think that's the most interesting part is, you know-
Demetrios: That's so classic, yeah. It's like- Every product person is like, "Of course. I thought I was gonna put it out for this," and-
Ola Hungerford: Yeah, I thought my customers would do this, and then it turns out no, people don't actually want that, they want this.
Ola Hungerford: Mm-hmm. And then especially when you are trying to design something that is, is very open-ended, um, yeah, I think you kind of it is really hard to predict how people will actually find things useful, you know, versus what you thought would be useful. And I think one thing that we're hoping to do is to like [00:21:00] solve just enough problems that if we do, you know, if and when we have to change our minds-
Demetrios: Yeah
Demetrios: it's
Ola Hungerford: not like, "Oh, okay, now we have to break 100 things." Mm-hmm. It's like maybe we just have to break five things
Demetrios: and Yeah. Roll it back- Yeah ... just a little bit.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. You know? I think that's been the hardest part too, 'cause it's like, oh, well, there's some situations we're not gonna be able to handle right off the gate.
Ola Hungerford: Mm-hmm. But hopefully it'll be enough that we can learn like, yeah, what actually works in general, and maybe, like I said, help move some of these other threads along.
Demetrios: Well, and that long tail of situations, you start to see which ones actually are important.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah.
Demetrios: The more that you're using it and the longer that it's out there, and you realize, wow, that use case we thought was gonna be, you know, 10% or 1% of the use cases, turns out it's actually a lot more.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah.
Demetrios: So we should probably cater to it and make the decisions based on that, and like keep that in [00:22:00] mind, right? So-
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. I think it's just agents in general, you know? It's like, it's like it's very, it still feels very, uh-
Demetrios: Yeah, like we don't even know what use case
Ola Hungerford: is- ... developer focused- Yeah ... right? Yeah. It's like that's the whole thing about like how everything's in, in, in Git repos.
Ola Hungerford: It's like that's great, but it's like obviously this is all designed by developers- Yeah ... who this is- For developers, yeah ... intuitive and it's not that it's like a bad solution, but it's just that's kind of what it makes, you know, who it makes sense to.
Demetrios: Yep. Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: Um,
Demetrios: yeah. That- that's funny you mention that because I feel like- more, the easier solution is to get non-technical folks to learn Git or just have their agents go and learn Git- Yeah
Demetrios: than to create a whole new Git. But I know that there's, like, different opinions on that and different ways of people- Yeah ... trying to draw it towards, like, the technical versus non-technical.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. And I think it's interesting 'cause it's, it's not that like, like you said, it's, it's not that someone can't just, you know, use an [00:23:00] agent or build a UI for, you know, what you do with Git, but it was designed to solve specific problems, and it was, like, designed at a point in time- Mm
Ola Hungerford: where-
Demetrios: There was no AI.
Ola Hungerford: Y- yeah. There was no... Like, I think, I think, you know, and, and, and I think it's actually something where it might also just be too much. Like, it might be like, oh, I just need, like, a folder of stuff-
Demetrios: Yeah ...
Ola Hungerford: right? Or-
Demetrios: It's overkill ...
Ola Hungerford: an old-fashioned database- Yeah ... or, you know. And so I think just, like, going back to, like, what are you trying to solve for, you know, when you're, when you're telling somebody, you know, "Learn this new system."
Demetrios: Mm.
Ola Hungerford: Um, I think just, like, understanding that person's, uh-
Demetrios: Level ...
Ola Hungerford: that... Well, and also what, what are they actually trying to do?
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: Right? What do they actually wanna do?
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: Like, a lot of things I've been doing recently are actually, I like to think of them as, like, trying to be less productive.
Demetrios: Oh.
Ola Hungerford: Which is trying to do things like learn how to play [00:24:00] tabletop RPGs.
Demetrios: Uh-huh. Nice.
Ola Hungerford: Which is, like, technically, like, not about productivity or, you know, creating software.
Demetrios: But it's so true. Every use case that we have right now with AI is, especially in the, like, B2B world, it's all like, "How can we measure ROI?"
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. And, and, you know, a- and, and that's the, kind of the...
Demetrios: Uh, yeah, I wanna go see those sheep up there.
Demetrios: Yeah. Then-
Ola Hungerford: Me too. I was like, what is that?
Demetrios: Look for the v- m- viewer. We are
Ola Hungerford: going- Oh, it's... Is that, like, the, uh-
Demetrios: Schönbachschaf? But anyway, we digress.
Ola Hungerford: No, this is important. Oh,
Demetrios: way
Ola Hungerford: too zoomed in on that. This is what we're talking about. Like, you don't wanna be, like, so hyper-focused on, like, my software factory.
Ola Hungerford: It's like, no, I didn't even see these- ... sheep statues. Yeah.
Demetrios: We're admiring a little bit of the culture while we are talking software factories. The... So you're trying to do non-productive- Yeah ... productivity type of use cases?
Ola Hungerford: Yeah, just things [00:25:00] like, you know, 'cause like I, I was talking somewhere else about how, um, my husband is very good at reminding us to, like, play enough games and-
Demetrios: Nice
Ola Hungerford: not just get into tunnel vision mode.
Demetrios: Mm.
Ola Hungerford: You know, and to make sure that we're just kind of, I don't know-
Demetrios: Having fun ...
Ola Hungerford: taking, taking breaks, having fun, not just, like, chasing doing more stuff, right? 'Cause I think that's a trap a lot of people have fallen into, me included, is like, you know, you can do so much more all the time and you're just like, "Oh, now I'm just trying to do more every day,"
Demetrios: you know?
Demetrios: Yeah. You know, it kind of sh- that whole, like, w- way of looking at the world stresses me out- Yeah. ... because I always feel like I'm not doing enough.
Ola Hungerford: I know, I know.
Demetrios: And I was making jokes about this, but it's kind of comes from a feeling that I had, which was like what do we call that feeling where [00:26:00] we know that agents should be working, but they're not?
Demetrios: And so, like, we're not having agents on. Yeah. There's not, like, a loop going, and we feel like we're missing out.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah, yeah.
Demetrios: Like, is there a feeling for that? It's not really anxiety, but it kind of is. Uh, I
Ola Hungerford: think, yeah, it's definitely... I think it is a form of anxiety because you're like, "Well, I could be... You know, I could have this thing just running and doing something."
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. And even if you can't quantify, like, what is the value of that thing that it could be doing, you're like, "No, no, no, I have to be doing something," right? "I have to be-"
Demetrios: Exactly. "...
Ola Hungerford: something has to be happening."
Demetrios: Exactly, like I'm wasting time right now. Well, yeah. And that's kind of the same vibe that I, that I, like, feel with this, where we have this productivity mindset where we always have to be on and doing things and- Yeah
Demetrios: accomplishing things and-
Ola Hungerford: Well, and even if it's fun, right? ... really it all. I, I think that's actually, like, the thing that's hard, too.
Demetrios: I think if we go that way, we get to the event center.
Ola Hungerford: Okay.
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: Uh, is like even if you're doing something that is fun, [00:27:00] isn't just, like, work-work, um, there's always, like, this carrot dangling in front of you.
Ola Hungerford: Mm-hmm. Like, oh, but I could make it do this, right? Yeah. Like I-
Demetrios: Yeah ...
Ola Hungerford: I think one of the best things and one of the worst things I've done is get, to get this little, uh, robot, um, called a Reachy Mini.
Demetrios: Hmm.
Ola Hungerford: And it's really cute, and it's really great, and it's just on my desk. And a lot of times I think of, like, new things that I could have Reachy do.
Ola Hungerford: And it's good, but then it's like, oh, this is a whole other, like-
Demetrios: Project that now- ...
Ola Hungerford: thing now where- ... I gotta spin up another loop ... I, I just have to, like... I mean, it's, it's a good problem to have, but it's also like you gotta, like-
Demetrios: Yeah ...
Ola Hungerford: you know, remember it's not about just like, oh, now I have to maximize Reachy.
Demetrios: It's
Ola Hungerford: like, no, I got this because it's fun and it's different.
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: And it kind of breaks you out of that, like, you know, staring at a computer all day.
Demetrios: Mm-hmm.
Ola Hungerford: Oh, my gosh, look at that car.
Demetrios: Yeah, that is so cool. I saw that earlier. The little old school Rolls-Royce- Yeah ... or Bentley. I'm not sure. I think a Bentley.
Demetrios: I don't know
Ola Hungerford: anything about cars.
Demetrios: Somebody that knows about cars will tell us in [00:28:00] the comments.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah.
Demetrios: Imagine. So the, uh, other thing that I was thinking about, or I've been pondering quite a bit, is how we build software if at the end of the day, most of the time software gets built because of friction that is faced by the users.
Demetrios: You were mentioning earlier, like, "Hey, let's build for this type of persona." A lot of things are overkill if we use Git, so... Or maybe it's, like,
Ola Hungerford: you don't- Or just, like, an arbitrary solution.
Demetrios: Yeah. If you're like, "Oh, this solution- Well, it doesn't need- ... I always use." We don't, yeah. Or maybe I don't
Ola Hungerford: need it.
Demetrios: Exactly. Yeah. We don't need to single out Git. Uh, we can just say in general you are not choosing the right tool for the job and for that persona. But this is where I have had things thrown on my head quite a bit because if agents are the ones that are doing the stuff, then that persona doesn't hit the friction.
Demetrios: And so whether or not it's [00:29:00] overkill is a little bit unclear. Does that make sense? Like-
Ola Hungerford: I guess so. Like- If I'm not
Demetrios: actually doing it-
Ola Hungerford: Yeah ...
Demetrios: then does it matter if the agent has to work a little harder? Uh,
Ola Hungerford: I, I think so. Like, I think right now, you know, it's interesting because- Like, we have so much access of, like...
Ola Hungerford: Or at least, like, you know, I, we don't really, but it's like you kind of feel like, you know, you have the power to just, like, I don't know, kind of compensate for those things. Like, oh, okay, it's fine if I, you know, if this isn't efficient because, you know, I can just kind of gloss over it. Yeah. Or this- It takes a few more tokens, whatever
Ola Hungerford: you know, I don't have to engineer it as much.
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: Um, but I think at some point that isn't gonna be true. I think, like, at some point you're gonna be like, well, even if it's just for the sake of not being wasteful Mm. Right? It's like, even if it was free, you know, if I was using... If I'm using like 100 times more electricity to do [00:30:00] something, I feel like there is, like, a reason why you wouldn't wanna do that.
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: Um, so I think it kind of just comes down to, like, how much do you care about being efficient- Yeah ... in a given situation, um, whether or not it's, like, a cost thing. Um, 'cause like personally, I just, I... Like, one of the reasons why I think, you know, engineers like doing the engineering is there is a lot of, uh, kind of satisfaction in making things work well.
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: And so this idea that it's like, well, I don't really have to make it work that well, or... I mean, I'm, I'm kind of saying that in a very negative way, but you know- Okay ... I don't actually have to engineer it.
Demetrios: But that's how I think. Yeah. Like, you're saying it in a negative way, but that honestly is me,
Ola Hungerford: like, eh.
Ola Hungerford: I mean, you know, and sometimes it's fine. Like, here's, here's an example where I think it's actually... Like, I totally get it, which is I don't wanna learn how to debug when, um, my computer crashes, right?
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: I don't wanna have to learn, like, how do I actually debug Windows or whatever, right?
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: It's like I just let an agent look at [00:31:00] all my stuff and debug it, and like gives me an answer, and I'm like, okay, I'm 80% sure this is at least partly right.
Ola Hungerford: Um, in this situation I'm totally fine not understanding or making it efficient because it's worth it to me-
Demetrios: Mm-hmm ...
Ola Hungerford: to spend five minutes on this, whether it's wasteful or not, right? Mm. Like, instead of like five hours, 'cause I don't wanna learn it.
Demetrios: Yeah.
Ola Hungerford: Um, but I think it's like making a choice about that is important.
Demetrios: Mm.
Ola Hungerford: Um, I don't think anyone should feel like they have to be all or nothing about that stuff. Like-
Demetrios: Yeah ...
Ola Hungerford: even with software, it's like I think people should be able to pick and choose where you do things in a less, like maybe a less autonomous way or whatever. Because, you know, if there's things that you care about making work well, I think you should be...
Ola Hungerford: I think it's, like, healthy to spend energy on or to, to do those
Demetrios: things. And that's where you dive down the rabbit hole.
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. And again, it's like, it's all kind of some form of rabbit hole Mm-hmm ... you can go down.
Demetrios: Uh- It's just choosing- It's, yeah ... the right rabbit hole.
Ola Hungerford: It's just [00:32:00] choosing which one you wanna-
Demetrios: Yeah
Ola Hungerford: be spending your time on, you know?
Demetrios: Yeah. And that brings us back to, like, the fun aspect of it- Yeah ... and making sure, like, even going down and- Deciding to play games, that is another rabbit hole that you go down and you- Yeah ... get to choose. That's the beauty of where we're at right now, is we get to choose-
Ola Hungerford: Yeah
Demetrios: uh, which rabbit holes.
Ola Hungerford: Exactly,
Demetrios: yeah. So Ola, thank you-
Ola Hungerford: Yeah. Thank you ...
Demetrios: for this conversation. This was awesome. Boom. Wasn't too bad, right?
Ola Hungerford: No.
Demetrios: Hopefully I was keeping up with you
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