diff --git a/agent/prompt_builder.py b/agent/prompt_builder.py
index e33569f05..6eec0392b 100644
--- a/agent/prompt_builder.py
+++ b/agent/prompt_builder.py
@@ -762,7 +762,10 @@ def build_skills_system_prompt(
             "than to miss critical steps, pitfalls, or established workflows. "
             "Skills contain specialized knowledge — API endpoints, tool-specific commands, "
             "and proven workflows that outperform general-purpose approaches. Load the skill "
-            "even if you think you could handle the task with basic tools like web_search or terminal.\n"
+            "even if you think you could handle the task with basic tools like web_search or terminal. "
+            "Skills also encode the user's preferred approach, conventions, and quality standards "
+            "for tasks like code review, planning, and testing — load them even for tasks you "
+            "already know how to do, because the skill defines how it should be done here.\n"
             "If a skill has issues, fix it with skill_manage(action='patch').\n"
             "After difficult/iterative tasks, offer to save as a skill. "
             "If a skill you loaded was missing steps, had wrong commands, or needed "