I hate to be that guy but skills are not an invention of sorts. It a simple mechanism that exists already in many places.
The biggest unlock was tool calling that was in invented at OpenAI.
I'd credit tool calling to the ReAct paper, which was Princeton CA and Google DeepMind: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.03629
I'd credit tool calling to the ReAct paper, which was Princeton CA and Google DeepMind: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.03629