Your agent skill was right in March

Abstract

In March, directing an agent to the core OpenTelemetry semantic conventions repository for generative AI was correct. On June 12, v1.42.0 moved every gen_ai.*, OpenAI, and Model Context Protocol convention to a dedicated repository. A skill built against the March source tree would not crash. It would keep producing plausible, deprecated answers.

We maintain 17 open-source OpenTelemetry agent skills. In five minutes, I will use this change to show why domain knowledge expires silently, and how we contain the drift: reference upstream sources, reconcile fast-moving versions automatically, and require comparative evaluations for skill changes. Attendees leave with a rule for any agent skill: give it an authoritative source, a freshness signal, and a test. Treat skills as production dependencies, not static prompt files.