Skills

6 min read

This feature is currently in BETA. It may change significantly before general availability. Documentation may lag behind feature updates. Use in production environments at your own discretion. Please refer to our Upgrade and Release Process for more information.

Skills follow the open Agent Skills concept and the Agent Skills specification. Existing skills authored against that specification are portable into Unique AI Chat when the required SKILL.md entry file is present and follows the supported format.

For the end-user explanation of what skills are and how to invoke them in chat, see Skills in Unique AI Chat.

Functionality

The Skills capability lets a Space admin curate a library of named, reusable instructions that users can invoke from chat with a / slash command or the chat input menu. Each skill is stored in the company Knowledge Base as a folder containing a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter and a Markdown body of instructions.

Skills are prompt enrichment. The agent first sees only the available skill names and descriptions. The full skill instructions are loaded only when the user forces a skill or when the agent decides that a skill is relevant for the current request.

Skills are storage-backed by the Knowledge Base. They are not pulled from a git repository, npm registry, external URL, or automatic skill-generation workflow. Admins create the skill manually, upload it into the dedicated company Skills folder, and choose which subset to expose to each Space.

Use Cases

The Skills capability is ideal for:

Reusable analyses and workflows. Capture a multi-step process, such as competitor research or earnings-call summaries, once as a skill and let users trigger it consistently.
Domain expertise injection. Encode a subject-matter playbook, such as regulatory review, financial-statement reading, or contract review steps.
Templated outputs. Ask the model to produce a specific output shape, such as an executive summary, KPI table, board update, or email draft.
Prompt-size control. Keep rarely needed workflow instructions out of the always-active system prompt and load them only when needed.

End-User Invocation

End users invoke a skill in one of three ways. Check here for guidance.

Create a Skill

Unique AI Chat does not yet auto-generate skills. Create the skill manually and upload it to the Knowledge Base.

Folder Structure

Each skill consists of a folder named after the skill. Inside the folder, add a raw Markdown file named SKILL.md.

text

Skills/
  analyze-data/
    SKILL.md

The broader Agent Skills concept can include additional files such as scripts/, references/, assets/, examples, templates, and other resources. In Unique AI Chat today, only SKILL.md is loaded into the chat context. Add all instructions required by Chat directly to SKILL.md.

Skill File Format

The SKILL.md file contains YAML frontmatter followed by the full skill instructions.

markdown

---
name: analyze-data
description: >-
  Tabular and numerical data analysis with descriptive statistics and insights.
  Use when the user provides data, tables, CSVs, or numbers and wants analysis.
metadata:
  thinking_level: medium
---

# Analyze Data

Follow this workflow when analyzing tabular data...

Format Requirements

Requirement	Details
File name	The entry file must be named `SKILL.md`.
Frontmatter	The file must start with YAML frontmatter.
`name`	Required. Use lowercase kebab-case with letters, numbers, and hyphens only, for example `draft-email`. The name can be 1-64 characters. For portability, keep it identical to the parent folder name.
`description`	Required. Explain what the skill does and when the agent should use it. This description is what helps the agent decide whether to load the skill automatically.
`metadata.thinking_level`	Optional. Hints the preferred reasoning effort for this skill. Supported values are `minimal`, `low`, `medium`, and `high` (depending on LLM). Put it inside the standard Agent Skills `metadata` block, not as a top-level frontmatter key.
Body	Everything below the frontmatter is the full instruction set loaded when the skill is activated.
Encoding	Use UTF-8 Markdown.

Thinking Level Metadata

Use metadata.thinking_level when a skill usually benefits from a specific reasoning effort. The value is used in the next loop iteration after the skill is invoked in the current turn.

markdown

---
name: security-audit
description: Review code for security issues.
metadata:
  thinking_level: high
---

The hint acts as a floor or default for the active skill, not as an override. Explicit higher LLM options, and model-supported effort levels still take precedence. If multiple skills are activated in one run, the highest declared thinking level is used. Invalid values are ignored, and skills without metadata.thinking_level behave as before.

If the Markdown or frontmatter does not follow the required format, the skill cannot be loaded and will not be available to the agent.

Authoring Guidelines

Keep each skill focused on one workflow or domain.
Write the description as activation guidance. It should clearly say when the skill should be used.
Put only instructions that are not needed for every message into skills. Always-relevant policies still belong in the space instructions.
Keep the SKILL.md body concise. Very long reference material is part of the broader Agent Skills pattern, but Unique AI Chat does not currently load supporting reference files.
Validate against the Agent Skills specification when portability to other skills-compatible agents is important.

Configure Skills for a Space

Skills are configured per Space. Adding a skill to the Knowledge Base does not automatically expose it in chat. A Space admin must enable the Skills capability and select the skill folder.

Author the skill. Create a skill folder under the company Skills Knowledge Base folder and upload SKILL.md.
Open the Space configuration. Open the target Space.
Go to Sources & Tools. Enable the Skills capability.

Pick the source folder. In the Skills settings, click Select Skills Root Folder, then choose the Skills root, a grouping folder, or an individual skill folder.

Save the Space. The selected folder and resolved skill list are saved in the Space configuration.

Selecting the root folder makes all valid skills below it available to the Space. Selecting a subfolder limits the Space to the skills in that folder and its subfolders.

Advanced Configuration

The Skills capability includes advanced configuration like other tools & capabilities in a Space.

Setting	What it controls
Tool Description	The LLM-facing description that explains when skills should be used.
Tool Description For System Prompt	Persistent instructions that tell the agent how to activate and follow skills.
Tool System Reminder For User Message	The dynamic list of available skills shown to the agent during each turn.
Tool Parameter Description Skill Name	Describes the skill name that should be activated.
Tool Parameter Description Arguments	Describes optional context that may be passed to a skill when it is activated.
Max Listing Desc Chars	Limits the length of each skill description in the skill listing.
Skill Budget Context Percent	Limits how much of the context window may be used for the skill listing.

Limitations

Knowledge Base only. Skills must live in the company Skills Knowledge Base folder. Pulling skills from external git repos, URLs, or registries is not supported. Uploading a skill to a chat does not work.
No automatic skill generation. Unique AI Chat does not yet create skills automatically. Admins create and upload SKILL.md manually.
Only SKILL.md is loaded in Unique AI Chat. Supporting files such as scripts/, references/, assets/, templates, and code snippets are part of the broader Agent Skills concept, but Unique AI Chat currently does not read them into the chat context.
Marker file. Only folders containing a top-level SKILL.md are recognized as skills. Folders without SKILL.md are ignored.
Single Skills root per company. The platform auto-creates a single Skills scope at the company root with company-wide access. Renaming or duplicating it is not supported.
No allowed-tools enforcement. The allowed-tools field from the Agent Skills specification is not currently consumed by Unique AI Chat; a skill cannot restrict which platform tools the agent may call from inside its instructions.
Naming consistency. Keep the folder name and name: frontmatter value identical to avoid confusion and to stay portable with the Agent Skills specification.

Admin Validation Messages

The picker (selection of Skill folder to include in the configuration) can surface these validation messages:

No skill folders with SKILL.md or Skills.md were found for this selection. — the selected folder or its visible subtree contains no valid skill.
These folders have no Skill/Skills markdown file: … — the selection includes folders that do not contain SKILL.md.
Multiple Skills root folders detected. Please rename or remove duplicates so only one 'Skills' folder remains. — more than one active Skills root exists for the company.

Feature Flag

The following feature flag must be set for Skills to function:

Name	Value	Pod	Effect when off
`FEATURE_FLAG_ENABLE_SKILLS_UN_20042`	`true` or a comma-separated list of Company IDs	`backend-service-chat`, `web-app-theme`, `web-app-admin`, `node-ingestion`	The Skills capability is hidden from the Space tool list, the `/` slash picker and Tools-menu submenu are not shown, the `getOrCreateSkillsRootScope` mutation returns `null`, and no company `Skills` Knowledge Base folder is provisioned.