Managing Skills

Skills determine what your agents can do and when they activate. This guide covers the practical steps for creating, configuring, and attaching skills to agents. For conceptual background on skill types, see Skills and Automation.

Accessing Skills

Navigate to Settings > Skills in your workspace. The skills index shows all configured skills with their type, status (enabled/disabled), and attached agents.

Admin or owner permissions are required to manage skills.

Starting from a Template

The fastest way to create a skill is from a template. Templates encode common automation patterns so you don't have to configure from scratch.

1. Click New Skill
2. Browse the template gallery at the top of the form
3. Select a template (e.g., "Auto-Triage Issues", "Weekly Status Report", "Research Tool Kit")
4. The template pre-fills the skill type, name, tools, instructions, and schedule or event configuration
5. Customize any details for your workspace
6. Click Create
7. Attach the skill to an agent

Templates are available for all three skill types — tool, trigger, and automation.

Creating a Tool Skill

Tool skills define which tools an agent can use when responding to @mentions.

Steps

1. Click New Skill
2. Select type: Tool
3. Enter a name (e.g., "Research Tools", "Task Management")
4. Select the tools this skill grants access to from the available list
5. Click Create
6. Attach the skill to one or more agents

Example: Research-Only Agent

Create a tool skill called "Research Only" with these tools:
- web_search
- fetch_url
- search_news
- read_rss_feed
- lookup_person

Attach it to your Researcher agent. The agent will only be able to use these tools, keeping it focused on research.

Creating a Trigger Skill

Trigger skills fire automatically when workspace events occur. They require the Pro plan.

Steps

1. Click New Skill
2. Select type: Trigger
3. Enter a name (e.g., "Auto-Triage Issues")
4. Select one or more event types to listen for
5. Optionally set conditions to filter events
6. Write instructions telling the agent what to do when triggered
7. Optionally select tools the agent can use
8. Click Create
9. Attach to an agent

Available Event Types

Task events:
- task_created — A new task is created
- task_state_changed — Task moves to a different state
- task_assigned — Task is assigned to someone
- task_priority_changed — Task priority is updated
- task_due_date_changed — Task due date is modified

Document events:
- document_created — A new document is created
- document_edited — A document is modified
- document_published — A document is published
- document_unpublished — A document is unpublished

Data events:
- data_table_created — A new database is created
- data_table_schema_changed — Database columns are modified

Other events:
- message_created — A new message is posted
- webhook_received — An inbound webhook payload arrives

Conditions

Conditions filter which events trigger the skill. The structured condition builder lets you configure filters using dropdowns instead of writing raw expressions:

• Task group — Select which task group(s) the event must originate from
• State — Filter by task state (e.g., only fire when a task moves to in_progress)
• Priority — Filter by priority level (e.g., high, urgent)

The builder shows all available filter fields based on the selected event type. The trigger only fires when all conditions match. You can combine multiple conditions to create precise filters — for example, "only fire when a high-priority task in the Engineering group moves to in_progress."

Instructions

Write natural language instructions for what the agent should do:

When a high-priority task is created, post a notification 
in #engineering and assign it to the on-call engineer. 
Search for related open tasks and link them in the description.

Creating an Automation Skill

Automation skills run on a schedule using cron expressions. They require the Business plan.

Steps

1. Click New Skill
2. Select type: Automation
3. Enter a name (e.g., "Weekly Status Report")
4. Use the schedule builder to configure when the skill runs (see below)
5. Choose which channel the agent posts results to
6. Write instructions for what the agent should do
7. Optionally select tools
8. Click Create
9. Attach to an agent

Schedule Builder

The visual schedule builder replaces manual cron entry with an interactive interface:

1. Pick a preset from common patterns (see table below), or
2. Build a custom schedule by selecting minute, hour, day-of-month, month, and day-of-week values

After selecting a schedule, the builder shows a next-run preview displaying your next 5 upcoming executions. This lets you verify the schedule is correct before saving — no more guessing what a cron expression means.

Schedule Presets

Preset	Cron Expression	Description
Weekdays at 9 AM	0 9 * * 1-5	Monday through Friday
Mondays at 9 AM	0 9 * * 1	Weekly on Monday
Fridays at 5 PM	0 17 * * 5	End of week
Every day at 9 AM	0 9 * * *	Daily
Every 4 hours	0 */4 * * *	Throughout the day
First of month	0 0 1 * *	Monthly

Custom Cron Expressions

If the presets don't fit, you can still enter a custom 5-field cron expression:

┌───── minute (0-59)
│ ┌───── hour (0-23)
│ │ ┌───── day of month (1-31)
│ │ │ ┌───── month (1-12)
│ │ │ │ ┌───── day of week (0-6, Sunday=0)
│ │ │ │ │
30 8 * * 1-5    → 8:30 AM weekdays
0 */2 * * *     → Every 2 hours
0 9 15 * *      → 9 AM on the 15th of each month

The next-run preview updates in real time as you edit the expression.

Attaching Skills to Agents

Skills only take effect when attached to an agent:

1. Go to the skill's detail page
2. Click Toggle next to any agent to attach or detach
3. Or go to the agent's settings and manage skills from there

An agent can have multiple skills attached. A skill can be attached to multiple agents.

Connector-Created Skills

When you set up a connector (e.g., GitHub, Google Calendar), it automatically creates tool skills granting access to the connector's tools. These auto-created skills appear in your skills list and can be attached to agents like any other skill.

For example, setting up a GitHub connector creates skills for:
- github_list_issues
- github_get_issue
- github_create_issue
- github_list_prs

Enabling and Disabling

Toggle a skill's enabled status to temporarily deactivate it without deleting configuration. Disabled skills don't fire triggers or run automations.

Execution History

Every skill execution is logged with timestamps, status, and duration. View the execution history from the skill's detail page to see:

• When the skill ran
• Status — running, completed, or failed
• Duration — how long the execution took

Execution history updates live via Turbo Streams — you can watch a running skill complete in real time without refreshing.

Scheduled skills also appear in the Scheduled Skills section of the workspace overview dashboard, showing when each automation will next run.

Skill Chaining

Skills can be chained together using the chain_next_skill_slug option. When a skill completes, it automatically triggers the next skill in the chain. This is useful for multi-step workflows:

1. Trigger skill detects a webhook event
2. Chains to a tool skill that processes the data
3. Chains to another skill that posts results

Configure chaining on the skill edit page by selecting the next skill to run after completion.

Tips

• Start with templates — Browse the template gallery before building from scratch
• Start with tool skills — Restrict agents to relevant tools before setting up automations
• Use the condition builder — Structured filters are less error-prone than raw conditions
• Check the next-run preview — Always verify your schedule shows the right times before saving
• Monitor execution history — Check the skill detail page after first runs to verify results
• Combine skill types — A single agent can have tool skills for manual requests, trigger skills for events, and automation skills for scheduled work