Skills & skill packs

In one line. A Skill is a reusable, parameterised capability — instructions plus the tools they need — and a Skill Pack bundles several so many agents can share one well-written capability. You’ll be able to. Write a skill in the Skill Editor, group skills into a pack, and pin either onto an agent. Where this lives. Studio ▸ Agent Builder ▸ Skills (route /studio/.../agent_builder/skills).

Why it matters

You will write the same instruction-plus-tool recipe again and again — “extract the fields off a résumé”, “summarise this contract clause”, “look up a customer and draft a reply”. A Skill captures one such recipe once, as a named, reusable, parameterised capability, so every agent can use it instead of you re-pasting a prompt into each one. A Skill Pack then bundles related skills together so an agent can pick up a whole toolkit in a single click. Build the capability well once; reuse it everywhere; fix it in one place.

This page assumes Your first agent (the Capabilities tab) and Tools & functions, so you know a tool from a skill.

Skill vs tool — don’t mix them up

A tool is a single low-level callable — one API endpoint, one SQL search, one function with a JSON input schema. A skill is a higher-level capability: a named bundle of instructions (a prompt body) plus the tools it needs, written so an agent knows when and how to use it. Think of a tool as a verb and a skill as a small playbook that uses verbs.

	Tool / Function	Skill	Skill Pack
Granularity	one callable	one reusable capability (prompt + tools)	a bundle of skills
You author	code/endpoint + input schema	a name, description, body (Markdown)	a list of member skills
Reused by	agents that call it	agents that pin it	agents that pin the pack
Built in	A5	this page	this page

Under the hood. A skill’s body is lazy-loaded — it’s only read into the prompt when the agent actually invokes the skill, so pinning many skills stays cheap. A Skill Pack carries a list of member skill IDs and expands to those members at load time; the agent ends up with the same skills as if you’d pinned each one individually.

The Skills surface

Studio ▸ Agent Builder ▸ Skills opens a two-tab builder: one tab for individual Skills and one for Skill Packs. Both tabs use the same left-list / right-detail shape you’ve seen across Agent Builder.

┌──────────────────── Studio ▸ Agent Builder ▸ Skills ─────────────────────┐
│ [  Skills  | Skill Packs ]                                               │
│ ┌── list ────────────────────────┐  ┌── detail / editor ──────────────┐ │
│ │ scope ▾   ⇅ sort   search      │  │  (Skills tab) → SKILL EDITOR    │ │
│ │ extract-resume-fields          │  │  (Skill Packs tab) → pack       │ │
│ │   [Project]             V3 ▾   │  │   detail, or "No Skill Pack     │ │
│ │ summarise-clause  [Platform]   │  │   Selected" empty state         │ │
│ │ [ + Skill ] / [ + Skill Pack ] │  │                                 │ │
│ └────────────────────────────────┘  └─────────────────────────────────┘ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Control	What it does	Notes
Skills / Skill Packs tabs	Switch between authoring single skills and bundling packs	A spinner shows while packs load.
Scope filter (`All / Platform / Project`)	Narrows the list by where a skill lives	Project skills are yours; Platform skills are shipped by the platform (read-only).
Sort toggle	Flips order (date ⇄ A–Z)	—
Search	Reveals a field; filters the list by name	—
Scope badge (on each row)	Shows Platform or Project	Tells you at a glance whether you can edit it.
Version chip `V<n> ▾`	A select of the version history (with “Load more”)	Every save bumps the version; older ones stay selectable.
+ Skill	Opens the Skill Editor for a new skill	Permission-gated.
+ Skill Pack	Creates a new pack (right pane switches to create mode)	Permission-gated.

RBAC. Create/edit buttons appear only if your role has the relevant Agent Builder permission. Without it you can still browse and pin existing skills.

The Skill Editor

Selecting a skill — or clicking + Skill — opens the Skill Editor in the right pane. It has a header strip and two tabs: Form (the everyday authoring surface) and Markdown (the raw skill body, where the actual instructions live).

Control	What it does	Notes
‹ Back	Returns to the Skills list	Unsaved edits are lost.
Title	Shows mode + `<scope>: <name>` (e.g. `Project: extract-resume-fields`)	Reads New / Edit / View.
Read-only badge	Marks a skill you cannot edit (Platform-, environment-, or subscription-scoped)	Hover for the reason; the editor becomes view-only.
Sysadmin override badge	Shows when a sysadmin is editing a normally-locked skill	Admin-only path.
Reset to default	Reverts a customised Platform skill to as-shipped	Sysadmin only; appears only when a Platform skill has been customised.
Create / Update	Saves the skill (creating it, or bumping its version)	Disabled unless the form is dirty and not read-only — there is no autosave.

Form tab — field by field

Field	What it’s for
Name	The skill’s handle, lower-kebab style — e.g. `extract-resume-fields`. This is how agents and packs refer to it.
Description	One or two sentences stating *what it does and when* to use it** — e.g. “Extract structured fields from a résumé; use when the document is a CV.” The “use when…” half matters: it’s the hint that tells an agent to reach for this skill.
Tags	Free-form labels for searching and grouping skills.
In packs	A chip strip of the Skill Packs this skill belongs to — add or remove pack membership right here, the mirror of editing from the pack side.
Runtime fields (when applicable)	For runtime/Python-backed skills only: script path, packages, allowed domains. Plain prompt-only skills won’t show these.

Markdown tab — the body

The Markdown tab is the skill’s body: the instructions the agent reads when it invokes the skill, written as a Markdown document (the “SKILL.md” style). This is where you say, in plain language, how to do the capability: the steps, the tools to call, the output format, the edge cases. Parameters and inputs the skill expects are described here in the body. Keep it focused — remember the body is only pulled into the prompt at the moment of use.

Write the Description for discovery (when should an agent pick this skill?) and the Markdown body for execution (how does it do the job?). Mixing the two is the most common authoring mistake.

Behaviours to know

Save is explicit and version-bumping. Each Create/Update writes a new version; the old one stays selectable in the row’s version chip. Nothing autosaves.
Scope is the Project. Skills you author are Project-scoped — usable by agents in this project. Platform-scoped skills are read-only here.
Read-only states are real. If you opened a Platform/environment/subscription skill, the Create/Update button stays disabled and a Read-only badge explains why. Clone-or-share via the Hub instead of trying to edit in place.

Skill Packs

A Skill Pack bundles related skills so an agent picks up the whole set at once. On the Skill Packs tab the left pane lists packs (with the same scope/sort/search header); the right pane is the pack detail.

Control	What it does	Notes
Pack card	Shows name, scope badge, version badge, description	One per pack.
▸ Skills (n) expander	Lists the pack’s child skills	Click to expand.
+ Add skill to pack	Adds a member skill to a writable pack	Only on packs you can edit.
+ Skill Pack	Creates a new pack	Right pane switches to create mode.
Pack detail (right)	Shows the member Skills, Description, Versions, and Linked agents	“Linked agents” tells you who’s relying on this pack before you change it.

How a pack expands at load time

When an agent loads a pinned pack, the platform expands the pack into its member skills — the agent behaves exactly as if you had pinned each member skill individually. So a pack is a convenience wrapper: pin once, get the whole set; edit the pack’s membership later, and every agent that pinned it picks up the change next load.

Watch out. Because a pack expands to its members, a skill can end up reaching an agent both directly (pinned) and via a pack. The agent’s Capabilities tab flags this with an “also in pack X” collision badge so you’re not surprised by the duplicate.

Attaching a skill or pack to an agent

You don’t attach skills here — you attach them on the agent, in the Capabilities tab of the agent editor. That tab has four capability groups; two are about skills:

Skill Packs — + Pin pack; pinned packs show as cards labelled “Pack”, with the member count (N skills) and a scope badge.
Skills — + Pin skill to pin an individual skill. Pinned skills show Pinned plus a runtime badge and any “also in pack X” collision badge. A ghost list below offers the in-scope skills the agent could auto-discover, each with its own Pin button.
“Restrict this agent to pinned skills only” checkbox — when ticked, the agent may use only the skills you explicitly pinned, ignoring auto-discoverable ones. Use it when you want tight, predictable behaviour.

So the division of labour is: author skills and packs here; pin them onto an agent over in Capabilities.

Coming soon / by design. Sharing skills across projects (and importing skills others have published) is the job of the Skills Hub — covered in Hubs & solutions. Within a single project, everything on this page works today.

Try it yourself

Go to Studio ▸ Agent Builder ▸ Skills. On the Skills tab, click + Skill.
On the Form tab, set Name to summarise-document and Description to “Summarise a document into 3 bullet points; use when the user asks for a quick summary.” Add a Tag like summary.
Switch to the Markdown tab and write a short body, e.g.: “Read the supplied document. Produce exactly three bullet points capturing the key facts. Keep each bullet under 20 words. If the document is empty, say so.”
Click Create. Note the new V1 chip on its row.
Switch to the Skill Packs tab → + Skill Pack. Name it Quick-Reads, give it a description, then use + Add skill to add summarise-document. Save.
Open any agent, go to its Capabilities tab, and + Pin pack → Quick-Reads. The pack card shows “Pack · 1 skill”. Your skill is now live on that agent.

You’ve authored a reusable capability once and handed it to an agent — and you can hand the same pack to ten more agents without rewriting a word.

Where to go next

MCP servers — connect external tool servers an agent can call.
Your first agent — the Capabilities tab where you pin what you built here.
Hubs & solutions — share skills and whole solutions across projects.
Tools & functions — the single-callable layer skills build on.