Skills

A skill is a named set of written instructions that an assistant or agent loads only when a task calls for it, for example "how we write a support reply" or "how to analyse a spreadsheet". Only the skill's name and description are in the prompt up front; the full text is loaded on demand, so you can give an assistant many skills without making every conversation long.

A skill grants no access. The tools, knowledge, approvals and guardrails still come from the assistant or agent it is attached to.

Create a skill

Open Skills in the workspace sidebar. Every member can read skills; creating, editing, deleting and attaching are for workspace admins.

• Name — lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, up to 64 characters. Unique in the workspace.
• Description — up to 300 characters. This is what the model reads to decide whether to load the skill, so say when it applies, not just what it is. "Use when the user asks for totals or a chart from an uploaded spreadsheet" works better than "Spreadsheet help".
• Body — the instructions, up to 20,000 characters. Keep it short and specific.

Attach a skill

On an assistant's or agent's Configure tab, the Skills section adds and removes skills (up to 20 each). In a workflow, a model step has a Skills checklist under its tools.

During a run the model sees the list of attached skills and can load one with a load_skill call. It may decide not to, so anything that must apply every time belongs in the instructions instead. Edits apply to the next load; a skill already loaded stays as it was in that conversation. A workflow step reads its skills when it runs, so deleting a skill fails any step that still uses it.

Platform skills

Some skills come with the platform and are available to every workspace: spreadsheet analysis, research with citations, document creation, knowledge base answers, and handling untrusted content. You can attach them but not edit them. If a skill mentions a tool the assistant doesn't have, it is written to fall back or say what it couldn't do.

Import and export

Skills use the open SKILL.md format: a file starting with a name and description, followed by the instructions. Export on a skill's row downloads a zip. Import SKILL.md or zip and Import folder open the create form prefilled so you can review it before saving; an imported skill is never attached to anything. Only the name, description and text are imported; other files and fields (such as allowed-tools) are ignored and listed, since a skill can't grant access. Imported text came from outside your workspace and the model will follow it, so read it first.