AX Is the New DX: How ElevenLabs Teaches Agents to Build with Skills, Tools, and Apps

Paul Asjes, DevX Lead at ElevenLabs, is pioneering a shift in developer education by focusing on educating agents, which are increasingly responsible for code generation. He identifies a challenge where agents, trained on static datasets, can generate outdated code, adversely affecting the developer's experience. Asjes addresses this with a three-part strategy: teaching agents to reason about products, providing deterministic MCP tools for function execution, and offering MCP apps for user-friendly interfaces. His approach highlights that agents require concise, well-curated instructions rather than exhaustive documentation to perform effectively. ElevenLabs has developed "agent skills," standardized by companies like Microsoft and OpenAI, to guide agents in specific tasks while avoiding errors. Asjes differentiates between skills, which teach reasoning, and MCP tools, which ensure correct execution. Furthermore, ElevenLabs' MCP apps extend the agent's capabilities to non-technical users through intuitive interfaces. Despite these advancements, challenges persist in discovery, versioning, and standardization among agent skills, prompting Asjes to envision a future where managing agents becomes a central role in software development, potentially transforming the landscape of developer experience.