How to create a skill

Private beta: Skills are currently in private beta. Ask your CSM if you want to join the beta program.

Overview

Creating a skill means writing down a process once so the TheyDo Agent can repeat it on command, for you and for anyone on your team. This article covers the three ways to create a skill, how to edit one, and what separates a skill people actually use from one they ignore.

Note: Skills require the TheyDo Agent to be enabled for your workspace.

Three ways to create a skill

Save a process from chat. The most natural path: walk the Agent through a task once in a normal conversation, correcting it as you go. When the result is right, tell the Agent to use skill-creator to save it as a skill. The Agent turns what you just did together into reusable instructions.

Start from the examples library. Browse the example skills, copy one that's close to what you need, and adapt it. This is the fastest path when your workflow resembles a common pattern, like a recurring summary or a formatting convention.

Create one from scratch. Use the built-in skill-creator skill to create a new skill from scratch. Tell it what you want to create a skill for, and it will interview you about your process if anything is unclear. It then drafts the skill for you. Use it when you know what you want but aren't sure how to phrase instructions the Agent will follow reliably.

Skills are always created as private skills, meaning only you can see and use them. If you have the skill manage permission you’ll be able to share them to the workspace as well.

Tip: You can also write your own skills, but we recommend always using skill-creator in the process to create and refine skills because it knows the technical details of the platform well.

Edit a skill

Every skill has a detail page where its instructions live, editable with the same rich text editor used for Docs and building block descriptions.

1. Open the Agent section in the sidebar.
2. Open the skill you want to change.
3. Open the chat and type /skill to invoke skill-creator and instruct it what you want changed. Skill creator doesn’t only have access to the skill instructions and description, but can also read through the feedback and outcomes to improve the skill based on that.
4. Alternatively you can manually edit the instructions on the detail page.
5. Run the skill again to check the change did what you intended.

Note: You need the skill manage permission to edit workspace skills that are not yours.

Create skills people keep using

A useful skill is not just a well-written prompt. It is a repeatable workflow with enough judgement, naming, and testing built in that people trust it after the first run.

1. Start from something you repeat. A task you only do once usually makes a poor skill. The value is standardisation, so choose work that comes back every week or follows the same pattern across projects.
2. Write the judgement calls, not just the format. The most useful instructions explain how to decide, not only what to output. For example: "Never attach a contradicting quote silently" is more valuable than another sentence about tone.
3. Fork a library skill before writing from scratch. The skills published in the library already include the sequence and guardrails. Start from the closest example, then ask skill-creator to change what does not match how your team works.
4. Run it, dislike it, fix it, run it again. Skills usually get good on the third pass. Use what went wrong in the first runs as input for skill-creator by providing the feedback when asked, so it can rewrite the instructions around real failures.
5. Name it the way your team talks. Anyone in the workspace can run a shared skill. If people cannot tell what it does from the name, they probably will not use it.
6. Remember that skills see what you see. A skill inherits the permissions of the person running it.

Tip: A skill invoked once and never again is a failed skill. The real test is week four, not the first run.

Maintain your skills

Treat skills like living documentation. When your process changes, update the skill the same week, because a stale skill quietly produces stale output for everyone who runs it. And when a teammate reports that a skill keeps needing the same correction in chat, improve the skill.