AI tricks get folded into the product

Charles Miller: “a skill that can be picked up in a few weeks, and will be obsolete in a few months, has no value outside the moment.” His mechanism: a prompt trick that works gets folded into the product and ships as the default a few months later. His analogy is the 1990s C belief that ++i beats i++, which survived long after compilers erased the difference.

He’s right about tricks, but not every AI skill is a trick. Verification, choosing context and deterministic gates depend on your problem, not the model, so no release absorbs them. Ron Minsky argues they matter more with agents. My test when I learn something: is this about the model or about the problem? Model tricks go in a skill file I can delete on release day.