Skills
The skill catalog, the conversational skill builder, and how to edit a deployed agent's skill.
A skill defines what an agent does. It bundles plain-language instructions, optional scripts, the environment variables it needs (with secrets flagged), the egress domains it must reach, and any governed tool dependencies. An agent is created around a skill, and the skill's declarations drive the configure screen: which variables you're asked for, which egress is added, which tool tokens are collected.
The skill catalog
The create flow's entry screen lists the platform's skill catalog. Skills are grouped by category — developer, SRE, research, utilities — and can be searched by name or description. Each tile shows the skill's description, how many variables it declares, and how many egress domains it needs. Picking a tile takes you straight to the configure screen prefilled from that skill.
Catalog skills ship with the platform and are read-only — you configure their variables and egress per agent, but you don't edit their contents.
The conversational skill builder
Instead of picking from the catalog, you can describe the agent in plain English and let the builder draft a skill. From the create entry screen, type what the agent should do and click Generate skill.
The builder is a split-screen chat:
- On the left, a conversation with the builder. It may ask clarifying questions before drafting; each of your messages refines the draft. Suggestion chips propose common refinements like adding error handling with retries, running on a schedule, or adding a notification step.
- On the right, a live preview of the drafted skill — the instructions document and any generated scripts — with the parts changed by the last turn highlighted.
The builder prefers the runtime's built-in tools over generating duplicate scripts, answers knowledge questions directly instead of wrapping them in a skill, and requires live data to come from tools rather than model knowledge.
When the draft looks right, continue with Create agent — the configure screen prefills from the draft exactly as it would from a catalog skill, and the skill is attached to the agent at create.
The conversational builder is available when your platform's builder service is configured. If it isn't, the describe box shows as coming soon and the catalog remains the create path.
Editing a deployed agent's skill
Agents whose skill was AI-generated can be edited after deployment. On the agent's Settings tab, click Edit skill — this opens the same conversational builder, seeded from the agent's current skill. Fix a script, add a step, allow another domain, then review and apply.
Applying an edit goes through a finalize screen that reviews the agent's configuration for the edited skill — variables (including values for any newly declared secrets), egress, tools, trigger, and channels — and applies everything in one rebuild: the agent's image is rebuilt and redeployed, which takes a few minutes. Environment values already stored on the agent are kept unless you enter new ones.
Catalog skills can't be edited this way — their contents come from the platform's registry. To change what a catalog-skill agent does, create a new agent with a generated skill.