Jordan Bench

Claude Code and Codex have gotten extremely good at computer use. An agent can now operate a computer to help accomplish tasks you give it.

I've been thinking about how you monetize a skill. Skills are instructions, operations, automation, and preferences for how an agent should accomplish a task. They're valuable, but once you give someone the instructions, they have the blueprint.

For example, I spend nearly all my time prompting and steering agents to write code. I found myself asking for simplified responses so I could read less and understand things quicker. I turned the way I wanted responses visualized into a skill called Altitude. The whole team at work now uses it, and it's been fun to watch others benefit from something I built.

The problem is, I haven't seen a good way to monetize a skill like this, even if it saves someone a lot of time. Plus, the person using it may already be paying for a Claude or Codex subscription.

Computer use feels like an interesting opportunity here. There are a lot of desktop apps where people perform manual workflows to produce something valuable. What if a skill could automate a good amount of that work inside the app they already use?

Take wedding videographers. They spend a lot of time editing after the wedding is over. A skill that helps with some of that work inside their editor, based on their editing preferences, feels increasingly feasible.

But how do you create an offer that packages that skill up in a way you can sell to videographers?

That's what I'd like to figure out.

One way might be to build a wrapper around the skill that works with Claude or Codex. It would know how to accomplish the goal without giving away the entire blueprint for someone to trigger whenever they want.

That wrapper might be an app that integrates with Claude or Codex. Or maybe it's a one-time upfront fee to purchase the skill with setup instructions. The latter feels like a harder sell.

Or maybe it's more programmatic, with usage-based pricing. Like an API where you invoke the skill, agree on the deliverable, and pay when it's delivered.

That's actually interesting. You'd need some rules baked in so payment isn't entirely subject to the user's discretion. Maybe half upfront and half upon delivery of the agreed value.

Somehow all through Claude or Codex. Though I don't know if either platform would allow or like that model.