Skills¶

A Skill is a reusable set of instructions that teaches an agent how to perform a particular task. Tools give an agent capabilities; Skills give it a repeatable method for using those capabilities well.

Use a Skill when a task should follow the same standards across agents or teams, such as a review rubric, a report structure, or a campaign handoff checklist. Keep agent-level instructions for the agent's overall role and use Skills for focused procedures that can be reused.

How Skills work¶

1. A Skill has a name, description, version, and instruction body. It may also include supporting resources.
2. The Skill is assigned to an agent or selected for a run.
3. The agent sees which Skills are available and loads the relevant instructions when needed. Supporting text can be read as part of that task.
4. The agent still uses only the tools it has been granted. A Skill does not grant a new tool or bypass file, connector, or data access rules.

Skills are available in Kiwi now. The management experience depends on the client or product integration you use, so do not assume every Skill action appears in the Kiwi web interface.

Choose and review a Skill¶

• Match the task. Prefer a narrow Skill with a clear description over a broad set of instructions that tries to cover every situation.
• Check the owner and source. Treat Skill instructions and bundled resources as content the agent may follow.
• Review changes by version. Updating the instructions can change future agent behavior even when the agent and its tools stay the same.
• Keep human review. A Skill improves consistency; it does not guarantee that an output is correct, compliant, or ready to publish.

Sharing and roles¶

Skills can be private to their members or public within the Kiwi deployment.

• The creator of a private Skill becomes an owner. Owners can update it and manage its members.
• A user member can see and use the Skill but cannot change it.
• Publishing or changing a public Skill requires an administrator.
• Kiwi protects the last owner from being removed, so every private Skill remains manageable.

Skills can also be imported from a public GitHub repository. Imports are safety scanned by default, but a successful scan is not a guarantee that the instructions are suitable for your data or task. Semantic scanning may send the imported folder to an AI model. Review imported content before assigning it.

Skills, tools, and connectors¶

A Skill can tell an agent when and how to use a tool, but the tool must still be enabled for that agent. See Connectors and MCP for external tools and Tools for the native catalogue.

Related: Create an agent · Security and data handling · Glossary