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Authoring skills

A skill is a reusable capability you can give an agent. Think of it as a named ability — "look up a customer in our CRM," "format a weekly report," "follow our refund policy" — that any agent you grant it to can use.

There are two kinds:

  • Instruction skills — pure guidance written in plain language. When the skill is active, its instructions are added to the agent's briefing for every message. Great for policies, tone, checklists, and house style. No code required.
  • Code skills — a small program (Python by default) the agent can run. Code skills live in a Git repository alongside a Skill.md file that describes what the skill does and how to use it. They're the right choice when a capability needs to call an API, transform data, or do real work.

How agents pick the right skill

You don't wire skills to specific phrases. Each skill carries a rich description, and when you send a message the platform automatically surfaces the skills most relevant to what you're asking — by meaning, not just keywords — and offers them to the agent. Write a clear, detailed description and the right skill shows up at the right time.

Creating a skill

You can create skills from Settings → Skills, or just ask an agent to help you build one.

  1. Go to Settings → Skills → New skill.
  2. Choose Instruction.
  3. Write the instruction text and a description of when it should apply.
  4. Save as a draft, then publish to make it active.
  1. Go to Settings → Skills → New skill and choose Code.
  2. The platform scaffolds a Git repository with a starter Skill.md and entry point for you.
  3. Write your code and instructions, commit, and tag a version.
  4. Publish the tagged version. The platform scans the bundle for malware, generates a short summary, and makes the version available to agents.

Versions are pinned

Agents always run the exact published version you granted them. Publishing a new version bumps the pin forward; older conversations aren't disturbed mid-flight.

Granting a skill to an agent

A skill does nothing until it's attached to an agent. In the skill's settings, choose which agents may use it. Public skills are available to any agent in your organization; private skills are visible only to their owner and your admins. An admin can promote a private skill to public from the organization's Skills admin table once it's ready to share more broadly.

Per-skill settings

Each agent can store its own non-secret settings for a skill it has attached — a default Slack channel, a timezone, a preferred language. For anything secret, like an API key or an OAuth connection, use a credential instead of a setting; credentials are stored encrypted and never shown back in plain text.

Network access

A code skill can only reach the internet if you allow it to, and when it does, every outbound call passes through our guardrails layer. Leave network access off for skills that only work with data already in the conversation.

Read-only sessions

In a read-only session, a skill can still run and read, but any part that would make a change is blocked. Every run is recorded either way, so you always have an audit trail of what ran, when, and whether it succeeded.

Selling your skills

Built something useful? You can list a skill on the marketplace for other organizations to buy and install.

Next step

Walk through it end to end in Publish a skill.