Markdown source

Agents Without Code: How Skills, YAML, and Filesystems Replaced Python

Conference Context

Session Description

Six months ago, building an agent meant writing a Python class with a while loop, tool definitions in dicts, manual state management or writing custom python functions. Today, you define an agent in a YAML file, drop a SKILL.md into a folder, and deploy. This talk traces the arc from "Agent in Python" to "Agent as filesystem". You'll learn the same agent built three ways: the hard way (Jan 2025), the simple way (Oct 2025), and the zero-code way (today).

Media Evidence

Building Conversational Agents — Thor Schaeff and Philipp Schmid, Google DeepMind (speaker-match related prior/adjacent AI Engineer video; captions: English auto-captions).

Evidence Graph

This evidence graph is generated from currently linked source material: official schedule text, related video pages, cached transcripts, visible slide text, dense/reconstructed slide pages, and AI slide-classification audits.

Media Signals

Agent Reading Notes

Use these signals to refine the synopsis, topic links, people/company context, and method notes. If a source is a related external video rather than an exact official recording, keep it framed as supporting evidence.

Transcript Status

Related video transcript availability: English auto-captions. Treat this as supporting context, not a recording of this exact scheduled session unless later confirmed. Not fetched yet.

People

Supporting Slides

Slide Evidence

Synthesis

Synthesized Breakdown

Agents Without Code: How Skills, YAML, and Filesystems Replaced Python ## Conference Context - Date/time: 2026-07-01 · 3:45pm-4:05pm - Track/room: Harness Engineering · Main Stage - Speaker(s): Philipp Schmid - Session type/status: session · confirmed - Track: Harness Engineering - Room: Main Stage - Session type: session - Status: confirmed ## Session Description Six months ago, building an agent meant writing a Python class with a while loop, tool definitions in dicts, manual state management or writing custom python functions. Today, you define an agent in a YAML file, drop a SKILL.md into a folder, and deploy. This talk traces the arc from "Agent in Python" to "Agent as filesystem". You'll learn the same agent built three ways: the hard way (Jan 2025), the simple way (Oct 2025), and the zero-code way (today).

Speaker And Company Context

Topics Covered

Derived Links And Source Material

Novel Concepts / Clever Methods

Evidence Boundary

This synthesis is based on the official schedule and linked source pages. It should be revisited when exact session recordings or transcript-backed secondary sources are available.