John Carr
John Carr
Senior UX Designer @ Red Hat
John Carr is a Senior UX Designer at Red Hat, where he works on AI-assisted experiences for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). He recently led the development of AI agent skills to complement the MCP server for RHEL. With a background in industrial design and architecture, John has worked on the design of exhibits, installations, and a travel trailer, in addition to user experiences.
Skills Skills Skills: Shaping the AI user experience with text files
UX is grappling with AI in many forms: chat interfaces, assistants, standalone AI agents. That last one — by way of MCP servers — can seem like pure engineering territory. Where does the user's perspective fit into the agentic experience?
Agent skills are plain-text instructions, not code, that sit between the user and the language model. They're well-chosen filters that help determine how the agent interacts with the user: when to ask before acting, what to explain in further detail, and what never to do.
In this talk, I'll share what I learned designing agent skills for enterprise system administration. I'll walk through specific patterns embedded in these files and how this process connected me with dozens of engineers and subject matter experts across an organization.
