# Don't Vibe Code, Do Skele-Code: Interactive No-Code Notebooks for Subject Matter Experts to Build Lower-Cost Agentic Workflows

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18122 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18122/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 71 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03172/) (2023)
- [RULER: What's the Real Context Size of Your Long-Context Language Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06654/) (2024)
- [Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09089/) (2025)
- [Agentic AI Security: Threats, Defenses, Evaluation, and Open Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.23883/) (2025)
- [AutoGen Studio: A No-Code Developer Tool for Building and Debugging Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15247/) (2024)
- [Good Vibrations? A Qualitative Study of Co-Creation, Communication, Flow, and Trust in Vibe Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.12491/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Skele-Code is a natural-language and graph-based interface for building workflows with AI agents, designed especially for less or non-technical users. It supports incremental, interactive notebook-style development, and each step is converted to code with a required set of functions and behavior to enable incremental building of workflows. Agents are invoked only for code generation and error recovery, not orchestration or task execution. This agent-supported, but code-first approach to workflows, along with the context-engineering used in Skele-Code, can help reduce token costs compared to the multi-agent system approach to executing workflows. Skele-Code produces modular, easily extensible, and shareable workflows. The generated workflows can also be used as skills by agents, or as steps in other workflows.