Tips & Best Practices

Practical advice from building 76 skills and running 10 autonomous agents

Tips

Essential Tips

Lessons learned from real-world usage.

Context is King

The AI is only as good as its context. CLAUDE.md, rules, and skill instructions shape quality more than any prompt engineering trick. Invest time in these files — they compound in value across every session.

Start Small

Don’t run /dx-agent-all on day one. Start with the building blocks:

Learning path

/dx-req <id>          # full requirements pipeline
/dx-plan              # generate a plan
/dx-step              # execute a step

Review, Don't Trust Blindly

AI makes mistakes. Code review exists for a reason. /dx-step-verify runs 6 verification phases for exactly this reason — build check, lint check, code review, test verification, accessibility scan, and visual comparison.

Config Over Code

Use .ai/config.yaml for project-specific values. Never hardcode build commands, branch names, or org URLs in skills.

.ai/config.yaml

build:
command: "cd ui.frontend && npm run build"
scm:
base-branch: development

Models

Model Tiering

Use the cheapest model that can do the job well. Cost differs 10x between tiers.

Opus ($$$)

Deep reasoning — code review, implementation planning, root cause analysis. Use when quality of judgment matters most.

Sonnet ($$)

Execution — step implementation, PR review, AEM inspection. Good judgment at moderate cost.

Haiku ($)

Lookups — file resolution, doc search, test running. Speed matters more than depth.

Practical

Tool-Specific Tips

Small details that save hours of debugging.

Shell Env for Copilot CLI

MCP secrets must be in ~/.bashrc (or ~/.zshrc). Copilot CLI does not read .claude/settings.local.json. If your MCP connections fail in Copilot but work in Claude Code, check your shell environment.

Dual Frontmatter in Rules

Rules need both paths: and applyTo: to work in both tools. Forgetting one means the rule silently doesn’t load in that tool.

Both required

---
paths: ["**/*.js"]
applyTo: "**/*.js"
---

allowed-tools in Skills

Add allowed-tools to skill frontmatter to avoid excessive permission prompts in Copilot CLI. Without it, every tool call asks for approval.

Skill frontmatter

---
allowed-tools: [read, edit, grep, bash, mcp]
---

Pre-flight Checks

Before running multi-step pipelines, verify: (1) all inputs exist (URLs, ticket IDs), (2) MCP servers respond, (3) target branch exists. Fail fast rather than burning through steps and tokens.