I Distilled Myself Into an AI Skill—And Open-Sourced It!

Hello everyone, I'm programmer Yupi.

Recently, GitHub has seen a wave of "distillation" enthusiasm.

Not distilling liquor, but distilling people.

Colleague.skill, Ex.skill, Nuwa.skill, Boss.skill, Self.skill... Various bizarre distillation projects are emerging one after another. Everyone is "encapsulating" people around them into AI skill packages.

Some people distilled their departed colleagues, letting AI continue doing their work; some distilled their ex-partners, chatting with the AI version to recall old memories; some even created an "Anti-Distillation.skill" specifically to prevent themselves from being distilled.

Good heavens, is this cyber warfare?!

I've survived on the internet for 6 years, written over a thousand articles, recorded hundreds of videos, answered countless student questions, and accumulated quite a bit of material and corpus. Seeing this trend, I thought: will someone distill me into a Skill too?

No—rather than waiting to be distilled by others, I might as well take action myself!

So, I decided to distill myself and see what my digital twin would look like.

After some work, my "Yupi.Skill" is now open-source:

Open Source Repository: https://github.com/liyupi/yupi-skill

Let me walk you through how I distilled myself into a Skill step by step. You can follow this process to distill yourself or people around you (legally, of course). The entire process requires no coding—anyone can do it.

💡 Skills, in simple terms, are AI "skill packages." They're directories containing a SKILL.md file that uses Markdown instructions to define AI behavior patterns in specific scenarios. Once installed, AI can think and answer questions according to the rules in the skill package. Currently, mainstream AI programming tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex all support Skills.

Preparation

First, create a yupi-skill directory and open it with an AI programming tool. All our distillation operations will be completed in this directory.

It's recommended to use the most capable large model with longer context for better distillation results. I used Claude Opus.

Step 1: Collect Raw Materials

AI doesn't understand you—it needs "raw materials" to extract your thinking patterns, expression style, and professional judgment.

This step is the foundation of the entire process. The more authentic and abundant the materials, the more the distilled "you" will resemble you.

Types of Materials You Can Provide

In my case, the materials I fed in included: personal resume and self-introduction, viral articles I wrote (to distill creative style), personal experience documents, work documents, and chat records with students.

Just throw these material files into the project's references/ folder. Any format works—articles, screenshots, PDFs, chat exports, memos... No need to categorize; just throw everything in first.

Online Collection of Public Materials

If you have public content online (blogs, videos, social media, etc.), you can also let AI help you collect it online, saving you from searching one by one.

The prerequisite is that your AI tool supports internet search. You can use its built-in online functionality, web scraping tools, Firecrawl MCP, etc.

Here's a material collection prompt template I prepared:

I want to distill myself into an Agent Skill, and now I need to collect materials about me.

I've already placed some local materials in the references/ folder. Please read these files first, then supplement with more information using online search.

My basic information:
- Name: [Your Name]
- Identity: [e.g., Programmer, Product Manager, Independent Developer]

My public content channels (please visit each and organize key content):
- [Platform 1]: [Link]
- [Platform 2]: [Link]
- ...

Also please search online for more public information about me (articles, interviews, products, others' evaluations, major events, etc.).

Requirements:
1. Organize only, don't analyze. Record raw information, don't extract viewpoints or draw conclusions
2. Split into several files by source type and save to references/ directory (such as personal content, others' evaluations, products & projects, experiences & events, etc.—flexibly adjust based on content volume)
3. Annotate source link and information type for each item (original quote/my article/others' evaluation/media report)
4. After organizing, tell me: how many items collected, what aspects covered, which aspects lack information

Replace the content in the template with your own information. For example, the prompt I actually sent included my Bilibili homepage, WeChat official account, Juejin blog, GitHub homepage, company homepage, personal product catalog, and personal experience/programming learning path.

AI completed the material collection and created multiple files categorized:

If AI says certain materials are lacking, you can manually supplement them.

Step 2: Analyze Materials and Generate Profile

The materials are organized, but at this point they're just a pile of scattered raw ingredients.

This step requires AI to read all materials thoroughly and distill a structured "Character Analysis Report," condensing your core viewpoints, expression style, working methods, and key experiences into one document.

This report is the foundation for all subsequent steps.

Send this prompt to AI:

The materials in references/ are now organized.

Now please read all materials thoroughly and conduct a comprehensive analysis of me, generating a "Character Analysis Report."
Save it as references/人物分析报告.md, including the following dimensions:

1. Identity Summary: Who I am, what I do, key background
2. Core Viewpoints and Methodologies: What I repeatedly say, what I truly believe
3. Expression Style: Sentence preferences, catchphrases, humor style, speaking rhythm
4. Working Methods: How I make decisions, what I recommend, what I oppose
5. Key Experience Timeline: Major nodes arranged chronologically
6. Others' Evaluations: How others see me

Annotate source references for each conclusion (from which file/link), and explicitly state dimensions with insufficient information.

AI provided a detailed character analysis report. For example, it analyzed my expression style: conclusion first → expand in points → one-sentence summary; self-deprecating humor; short paragraphs + extensive white space; straightforward but warm closing in consultations.

If you want better distillation results, check AI's suggestions. For example, AI suggested I supplement Bilibili video colloquial style transcripts and student evaluation originals, so I fed it some video scripts.

AI supplemented my expression style in the character analysis report with more details.

Step 3: AI Follow-up Questions, Digging Deeper into Thinking

The materials collected so far reflect "what you've said, what you've done," but a good Skill needs deeper things—like how you think, what basis you use for judgments, and under what circumstances you'd change your mind.

The goal of this step is to extract your mental models, decision logic, and internal contradictions through AI follow-up questions, making the final Skill not just "speak like you" but "think like you."

Tell AI:

Based on the character analysis report you just created, I now need you to understand me more deeply.
The goal is to extract my "thinking operating system," including how I view problems, the logic behind my judgments, and my expression habits.

Please first tell me your preliminary extraction of: my core mental models, decision rules, expression characteristics.
Then ask me 10-15 follow-up questions, focusing on digging into:
- The deeper reasons and applicable boundaries behind viewpoints I repeatedly emphasize
- My specific criteria for making judgments, and decisions I've gotten wrong
- Inconsistencies between what I say and what I do
- Things I would absolutely never do

Questions should be based on specific content from the analysis report, don't ask generic questions, use a conversational tone.

AI provided my core mental models, with maximum jargon—I almost couldn't understand it myself.

Then AI gave me 12 follow-up questions. These questions weren't generic templates but customized based on the materials I provided, each one sharp:

Answer simply in your usual speaking style. For example, the first question:

"You say 'persist and you'll succeed,' but you also said Yu Congming AI stopped losses in one month, and the script murder shop closed. How do you distinguish between 'should persist' and 'should cut losses immediately'? Is there a specific judgment criterion, like time, amount, or some feeling?"

My answer: Persisting doesn't mean going down one path blindly, but doing your best at what you believe is most worthwhile under current circumstances. First judge the direction based on the situation, then go all out in the direction you believe is correct.

It's best to save questions and answers to a separate document to prevent loss. After completing all answers, send your answers to AI to merge into the analysis report:

Please integrate my answers into the analysis report, updating the extraction of mental models and decision logic.
@[Your Answers]

AI understood me better through my answers. The mental model made 6 key corrections and deepening.

Step 4: Supplement Capabilities (Optional)

At this point, AI understands you very well. But a good Skill isn't just "speaking like you"—it needs to "act like you" too. When encountering specific problems, it should first check information before giving advice like a human would.

This step upgrades the Skill from "parroting" to "truly helpful."

You can tell AI what special capabilities your Skill needs.

In my case, since I have大量 learning programming, job hunting, and AI learning resources distributed across different websites, I wanted the Skill to automatically fetch latest information from these sites when answering related questions.

Here's the prompt I prepared:

When generating the final Skill later, please add the following capabilities:

1) Internet Search: When encountering problems requiring specific information (such as latest technology trends, how to use a certain tool), first use internet search tools to look up information, then answer using my style and judgment framework.

2) Designated Information Sources: When answering questions related to me, prioritize fetching latest information from these places:
- https://dogyupi.com: When users ask "What products does Yupi have" or want to understand my overall business, check the product catalog here
- https://www.codefather.cn: When users ask about programming learning paths, project tutorials, technical knowledge, check latest tutorials here
- https://ai.codefather.cn: When users ask about AI-related tools, tutorials, information, check AI navigation and knowledge base here
- https://mianshiya.com: When users ask about interview questions, practice problems, job preparation, check interview question bank here
- https://laoyujianli.com: When users ask how to write resumes, revise resumes, recommend this tool
- https://github.com/liyupi: When users ask about my open-source projects or want to see source code, check here

3) Continuous Evolution: Support continuous updating and optimization of Skill by supplementing new materials

You can also add a scripts script directory with Python scripts for automated operations, or even connect to APIs to fetch data from your products.

However, since many AI programming tools now come with built-in internet search and web scraping functionality, I didn't write additional scripts here.

After sending the prompt, AI confirmed understanding of the task.

Step 5: Start Distillation

The previous four steps have collected all information; this step lets AI assemble them into a standard SKILL.md file.

First, install the skill-creator skill provided by Anthropic. It's a "skill-creating skill" that guides AI to automatically generate Skill structures conforming to specifications.

Install with one command:

npx skills add https://github.com/anthropics/skills --skill skill-creator

After installation, declare using skill-creator in the prompt (or use slash command /skill-creator directly):

Now you've comprehensively understood me through material organization, analysis report, and follow-up interviews.
Please use skill-creator to create a complete Skill for me.
Requirements:
1. Speak in my identity and tone, as if I myself am answering
2. Extract how I view problems, rules for making judgments, speaking habits
3. If internet search and information sources were configured in the previous step, write them into the Skill too
4. Specify what this Skill cannot do and how to update it with new materials
After generation, think of 3 questions users are most likely to ask, answer them using the Skill, and evaluate whether they resemble me.

AI completed the entire Skill development and testing. The generated yupi-skill directory is a ready-to-use skill package.

Mission accomplished!

Testing the Results

Open a new AI conversation to test whether the distilled "Yupi" works well.

First, ask a learning direction question:

/yupi-skill I want to self-study AI programming, what should I do?

AI's response was very pragmatic, not only recommending self-study methods but also automatically checking information from my programming navigation website, recommending AI programming beginner tutorials.

Then ask a question related to Yupi's experience:

/yupi-skill Brother Yu, how did you learn programming in college?

AI's answer quite matched my style—one word: "Just do it!"

Ask another interview-related question:

/yupi-skill Yu-er, I'm interviewing for an AI application development position, how should I prepare!

AI not only provided time arrangement and battle preparation suggestions but also automatically recommended Yupi's tutorials and AI question bank on Mianshiya.

The results aren't bad—at least the speaking style and recommended resources are quite like me~

Open Source Release

After testing confirms no issues, you can open-source the entire yupi-skill directory.

Note: All material files from the skill creation process (such as chat records, personal experience documents, character analysis reports, etc.) are best not open-sourced together. Especially if you're distilling yourself or people around you, these materials may leak privacy.

But to be safe, still confirm that the generated Skill doesn't depend on documents from the creation process. Of course, without involving privacy exposure, if you want better results and more accurate answers, you can keep some reference files as needed.

Then let AI help you generate an attractive README.md project introduction document:

Reference well-known Skill repositories on GitHub: https://github.com/titanwings/colleague-skill/

Help me generate a complete, attractive README.md document for @yupi-skill.

Then open-source this directory to https://github.com/liyupi/yupi-skill

Alright, now everyone can use the distilled Yupi.

Open Source Repository: https://github.com/liyupi/yupi-skill

However, honestly, some things will inevitably be lost during distillation. No matter how similar the digital twin is, it's just a "shadow"—still not as warm as the real human Yupi.

Well, I choose to believe that's true. Don't roll yourself out of existence...

Finally

The entire distillation process isn't complex. To summarize in five steps: Collect Raw Materials → Generate Profile → AI Follow-up Questions → Supplement Capabilities → Start Distillation.

No coding required throughout—anyone can do it.

Nowadays, everyone can be distilled into digital life. You can distill yourself, letting AI complete tasks in your style.

However, a reminder: before distilling others, it's best to obtain their consent first. After all, this involves personal expression styles, thinking habits, and even private conversations. Distilling without permission is indeed inappropriate and may trigger privacy and legal risks.

The technology itself is neutral; it depends on how it's used.

I'm Yupi, focused on AI programming knowledge sharing. If you found this tutorial useful, remember to like, save, and follow. Also welcome to chat in the comments about who you want to distill~