Skills are reusable instruction bundles an Agent can load on demand. Instead of re-explaining how you want a recurring task done, you write it down once as a Skill; the Agent loads it whenever the task comes up and follows it the same way every time.
What a Skill is
A Skill has three parts:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | Identifies the Skill, e.g. meeting-summarizer. It must be unique wherever the Skill is available. |
| Description | Tells the Agent when to use this Skill. This is what the Agent matches against, so describe the trigger, not the output — "Use when the user provides meeting notes or a transcript and wants them summarized." |
| Instructions | The guidance the Agent follows once the Skill is loaded — the actual procedure, tone, and output format. |
A Skill can also carry reference files: templates, examples, checklists, brand guidelines. The Agent does not read all of them up front. It loads the Skill's instructions, searches the bundled material for the part that is relevant, and reads only that — so a Skill can carry far more reference material than would fit in a single conversation.
Where Skills live
Skills are managed in two places, and where you add one decides who can use it:
- Space settings — shared by every Agent in that Space. Agents show these as inherited, and they stay managed in the Space.
- Agent settings — available to that one Agent only.
Editing a Skill needs the matching permission for the Space or Agent it belongs to. A Space Skill and an Agent Skill cannot share the same name in the same place.
Creating a Skill
You have two ways in:
Write it inline. Fill in name, description and instructions directly. You can add bundled files later by editing the Skill and uploading an archive.
Upload a bundle. Either a .md file that carries the Skill's name and description as YAML frontmatter, or a .zip containing a SKILL.md alongside its reference files. Uploading is the route to take when the Skill already exists somewhere else, or when it is large enough that you would rather keep it in version control than in a text box.
A minimal SKILL.md:
Code
Versions
Skills are versioned. Saving changes without publishing keeps them as a draft; publishing makes the new version the one Agents load. A published version is immutable — the next change becomes the next version rather than rewriting history.
Edits to a Skill's instructions and details apply immediately once published. Replacing a Skill's files uploads a new .md or .zip over the existing bundle. Deleting a Skill removes it permanently.
Turning Skills on
An Agent uses Skills when they are available to it — through its Space or added directly. If an Agent should not use a Skill that its Space provides, manage that in the Space settings rather than removing the Skill.
Skills and code execution
When code execution is enabled, a Skill's bundled files are placed into the Agent's sandbox as real files on disk. That is what makes Skills useful for work that is more than text: a Skill can ship a spreadsheet template or a script, and the Agent can run against it directly.
Changing the Skills available to an Agent rebuilds its sandbox, so the next message in an existing conversation starts from a fresh environment.