How I Improved My Blog with Vercel Agent Skills and React Best Practices

Early this morning, I found that Vercel had released a new Agent Skill about React Best Practices.

I thought: Who better than Vercel? They have taken React to the next level. I wondered how the experience of their entire team of developers could help me improve my blog.

So I ran one command, and here is what happened.

The Problem: Good Code That Could Be Great

My blog was already using Next.js 16 and React 19. The build was passing, linting was clean, and users seemed happy. But as developers, we know that "working" and "optimized" are two different things.

I had questions:

Was I using React hooks correctly?
Were my components re-rendering too much?
Could my images load faster?
Was my code accessible for keyboard users?

These aren't the kind of problems that break your app. They're the silent performance killers that add up over time.

Why Vercel's Experience Matters

If there is one company that truly understands React and Next.js at scale, it is Vercel. The sheer volume of products and solutions they have developed is brutal. They have seen it all: the performance bottlenecks, the complex edge cases, and the headaches that keep us up at night.

For years, that knowledge was largely locked inside their engineering team. But now, thanks to Agent Skills, we can access that collective wisdom directly in our editor.

The Solution: One Command, Instant Expertise

Vercel recently released react-best-practices, a collection of React optimization patterns packaged as Agent Skills. These skills work with AI coding assistants like Cursor, Claude Code, and others.

The best part? Installing them is ridiculously simple:

npx add-skill vercel-labs/agent-skills

That's it. One command, and your AI assistant now has access to 40+ React optimization rules, ordered by impact.

What the Agent Uncovered

We all miss things. Sometimes we're in a rush to ship, or we simply overlook details assuming they "don't matter much."

The agent caught several things I had either ignored or discarded due to time constraints. It wasn't just "fixing bugs"—it was highlighting standard practices I had drifted away from. Now, thanks to the Vercel Agent Skill, I feel much more confident and calm about the code I'm shipping.

These aren't micro-optimizations. They're the kind of improvements that show up as:

Faster perceived performance (users feel the difference)
Better accessibility scores (more users can use your site)
Lower maintenance costs (consistent patterns across the codebase)

The agent skills framework prioritizes fixes by impact:

CRITICAL: Eliminate waterfalls, reduce bundle size
HIGH: Server-side performance, client-side fetching
MEDIUM: Re-render optimization
LOW: Advanced patterns

This ordering is brilliant. It prevents you from optimizing the wrong thing. No point in shaving microseconds off a loop if you have a 600ms request waterfall.

How to Use This in Your Projects

Here's my recommendation:

Step 1: Install the Skills

npx add-skill vercel-labs/agent-skills

Step 2: Ask Your AI Assistant

Tell your coding assistant:

"Review this project using React best practices from Vercel"

Step 3: Prioritize by Impact

Don't try to fix everything at once. Start with CRITICAL issues:

Are you blocking async work unnecessarily?
Is your bundle size growing?
Are components re-rendering too much?

Step 4: Verify the Changes

Always run your tests and build:

npm run lint
npm run build

Make sure nothing broke. Performance improvements shouldn't introduce bugs.

What I Learned

The most valuable lesson? Performance work compounds. Every small regression you ship today becomes a long-term tax on every user session.

By applying these best practices early, you're not just making your app faster today. You're preventing future slowdowns.

Think of it like this: Would you rather fix 40 performance issues in one focused session, or discover them one by one over the next year when users complain?

Try It Yourself

If you maintain a React or Next.js project, I highly recommend trying this. The setup takes 30 seconds, and the insights are invaluable.

Here's what to do:

Install the agent skills: npx add-skill vercel-labs/agent-skills
Ask your AI assistant to review your code
Start with the CRITICAL fixes
Verify everything still works

You'll be surprised at what you find. I know I was.

Have you tried agent skills in your projects?