Skills FAQ

How does the AI decide which Skill to use?

It matches the ticket or conversation against each Skill's name and description, and applies the closest match. That's why specific, trigger-based descriptions matter more than broad topic labels. See Creating good Skills.

What happens if two Skills could both apply?

If a customer-specific Skill and a firm-wide Skill both cover the same situation, the customer-specific one takes precedence, since it's the more specific instruction. Among firm-wide Skills, overlapping triggers usually mean the Skills are scoped too broadly. Narrow the descriptions so only one clearly matches.

Do technicians have to invoke a Skill by name?

No. The AI selects a Skill automatically based on context. Technicians only need to know a Skill exists if they want to review or edit it.

Can a Skill take action on its own, or does it always need a human?

That's controlled by what the Skill's instructions say and which Agent Tools it's allowed to use, not by Skills as a mechanism. Write any approval or human-in-the-loop requirement directly into the Skill's steps. The AI only skips a human step if the Skill doesn't ask for one, since nothing else is enforcing it.

Do Skills work without any connected integrations?

Yes. A Skill can be pure instructions and judgment: how to phrase a response, what to check, when to escalate, with no tool use at all. Agent Tools come into play only when the procedure needs to actually do something in a connected system.

Why isn't the AI following a Skill I wrote?

Usually one of:

• The Skill's description doesn't clearly match the situation, so the AI either didn't select it or selected a different one instead.
• The instructions are ambiguous about what to do, so the AI is filling the gap with its own judgment.
• A customer-specific Skill is overriding it for that account.

Test the Skill against the specific ticket that didn't behave as expected. That usually shows which of the three it is: for example, if a Skill written for "Toby is locked out of his account" never fires when Toby actually gets locked out, check the description first, then the customer-specific overrides.

How many Skills is too many?

There's no hard limit, but overlapping or near-duplicate Skills make selection less predictable, not more. If two Skills cover similar ground, merge them or make the difference between them explicit rather than adding a third variant.

Can I turn a Skill off without deleting it?

Yes. Disable it instead of deleting when you want to pause it temporarily, during a process change for instance, without losing the work if you bring it back.