<\/p>\n
Internet users have found humor in the idea behind the tool, joking about automating their coworkers before themselves. However, Colleague Skill\u2019s virality has sparked a lot of debate about workers\u2019 dignity and individuality in the age of AI.<\/p>\n
After seeing Colleague Skill on social media, Amber Li, 27, a tech worker in Shanghai, used it to recreate a former coworker as a personal experiment. Within minutes, the tool created a file detailing how that person did their job. \u201cIt is surprisingly good,\u201d Li says. \u201cIt even captures the person\u2019s little quirks, like how they react and their punctuation habits.\u201d With this skill, Li can use an AI agent as a new \u201ccoworker\u201d that helps debug her code and replies instantly. It felt uncanny and uncomfortable, Li says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even so,\u00a0 replacing coworkers with agents could become a norm. Since OpenClaw became a national craze, bosses in China have been pushing tech workers to experiment with agents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although AI agents can take control of your computer, read and summarize news, reply to emails, and book restaurant reservations for you, tech workers on the ground say their utility has so far proven to be limited in business contexts. Asking employees to make manuals describing the minutiae of their day-to-day jobs the way Colleague Skill does is one way to help bridge that gap.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hancheng Cao, an assistant professor at Emory University who studies AI and work, believes that companies have good reasons to push employees to create work blueprints like these, beyond simply following a trend. \u201cFirms gain not only internal experience with the tools, but also richer data on employee know-how, workflows, and decision patterns. That helps companies see which parts of work can be standardized or codified into systems, and which still depend on human judgment,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
To employees, though, making agents or even blueprints for them can feel strange and alienating. One software engineer, who spoke with MIT Technology Review<\/em> anonymously because of concerns about their job security, trained an AI (not Colleague Skill) on their workflow and found that the process felt reductive\u2014as if their work had been flattened into modules in a way that made them easier to replace. On social media, workers have turned to bleak humor to express similar feelings. In one comment on Rednote, a user wrote that \u201ca cold farewell can be turned into warm tokens,\u201d quipping that if they use Colleague Skill to distill their coworkers into tasks first, they themselves might survive a little longer.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #Chinese #tech #workers #starting #train #doublesand #pushing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Internet users have found humor in the idea behind the tool, joking about automating their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[6716,388,6717,6217,741,1768,3828,1095],"class_list":["post-7375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-a-viral-github-project-that-claims-to-clone-coworkers-into-a-reusable-ai-skill-is-forcing-chinese-tech-workers-to-confront-deeper-fears","tag-chinese","tag-doublesand","tag-pushing","tag-starting","tag-tech","tag-train","tag-workers"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rice-bowl-claw.jpg",1200,600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rice-bowl-claw-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rice-bowl-claw-300x150.jpg",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rice-bowl-claw-768x384.jpg",640,320,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rice-bowl-claw-1024x512.jpg",640,320,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rice-bowl-claw.jpg",1200,600,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rice-bowl-claw.jpg",1200,600,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rice-bowl-claw-1024x512.jpg",1024,512,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rice-bowl-claw-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}