GFgfortaine·Jan 26, 2026
GitHub : https://github.com/PrefectHQ/colin
In Introducing Colin - A context engine that keeps agent skills freshPrefectHQ
colin
Python2026–2026
PrefectHQ / colin
colin
A context engine that treats skills as software.
2Distinct people
2Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
124GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A context engine that treats skills as software.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by hour2 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2026-01-26 18:17:15 UTC to 2026-01-26 21:24:06 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 26, 18:00 | 2026-01-26 18:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-26 19:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Jan 26, 19:00 | 2026-01-26 19:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-26 20:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 26, 20:00 | 2026-01-26 20:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-26 21:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 26, 21:00 | 2026-01-26 21:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-26 22:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
2 sourcesShow HN: Colin, a context engine for keeping agent skills fresh
Hi HN — I'm the creator of FastMCP and wanted to share a new project we've open-sourced called Colin.
I obviously love MCP, but I also use skills extremely heavily in my day-to-day work. Being exposed to both has made me very aware of a tension:
- Anything with dynamic information, I ship over MCP. This takes work to set up and requires conversational boilerplate to refresh in every conversation.
- Anything behavioral, I put in skills. They're lightweight, used automatically, and feel great. But I would never put dynamic information in a skill because keeping it up to date is a pain. And yet the idea of having an agent skill that includes relevant and timely data is so appealing!
So: think of Colin as a skills-native templating engine. The goal is to compile context documents from dynamic sources (GitHub, Linear, Notion, MCP servers, etc.
Read the rest
) in a way that makes them easy to automatically update. Colin traces dependencies to determine staleness and has intelligent caching to minimize the burden of recompiling. It's general purpose, but it turns out to be extremely useful for writing skills that contain dynamic knowledge and need to stay current.
We've just released it. It's experimental and early, but it's a direction I'm actively exploring and would love feedback.
Here's a post with more background, if interested: https://www.jlowin.dev/blog/colin