Skills Overview

Understanding Skills in Writer Agent

What is a Skill? A Skill is a saved set of instructions that teaches Writer Agent exactly how you want a specific task done. Set it up once — the agent follows the same steps, in the same way, every time you need it.

Why are skills powerful? Skills can have code inside them that allows WRITER Agent to run complex logic, validations, or calculations consistently. The best part is that WRITER Agent will write the skill. You just have to describe what you need in natural language. No technical ability is needed!

Why it matters: You get consistent results without re-explaining your process or cleaning up outputs afterward .

💡TIP: Skills are a concept and format used across AI tools. Take skills from other tools and ask WRITER Agent to convert it into a WRITER Agent compatible skill!

When are skills most useful?

Skills are most useful when a task needs to be done the same way, every time. Here are three ways teams put them to work:

Pull data from connected tools or reports in exactly the format you need
- Connect Writer Agent to tools like your CRM, spreadsheets, or other business systems and have it pull data in a specific, predictable structure.
- Define the format once which fields to include, how they're labeled, the right mappings, how the output is organized and the agent follows it on every run.
- No more manually reformatting exports or re-explaining what you need.

Example:

Create a skill that pulls a pipeline report in Salesforce using opportunities. The report should include amount, close date, probability, and opportunity owner. Sort it by close date (most recent at the top).

Build a checklist that makes sure nothing gets missed
- Capture a multi-step process as a checklist inside a Skill so the agent works through every step, every time, and no step is skipped or inconsistently run.
- Great for review processes, quality checks, compliance tasks, or any workflow where thoroughness really matters.
- Define the standard once; the agent applies it reliably whether the task runs once or hundreds of times.

Example:

Create a paragraph word limit checker skill that counts the words in each paragraph and rewrites the paragraph if it's over 0 words.

Lock in the structure and layout of your outputs

Tell the agent exactly how a finished document, report, or summary should look which sections to include, in what order, and in what tone.
The agent follows your template rather than making its own formatting decisions.
Your outputs come back ready to use, without extra cleanup.

Example:

Review the steps taken in this session and create a skill that ensures that the final document follows the same conventions, layout, and paragraph structure. Create the final document as a docx file.

Using Skills

Finding and Installing Skills

Writer comes with 200+ ready-to-use Skills covering industries like healthcare, financial services, and retail plus general business tasks.

To browse and install Skills:

Go to Manage Writer Agent > Skills
Select the Writer Skills tab to browse the full library, or Shared with me to see Skills your organization has set up
Click the + icon next to any Skill to add it

💡TIP: Once a Skill is installed, Writer Agent can start using it automatically when it's relevant — you don't have to select it manually every time.

How to Use a Skill

Choose it yourself: Type / in the chat and pick the Skill from the menu
Let the agent decide: Describe what you need in plain language if you have a matching Skill installed, the agent will apply it on its own

Using Skills Inside Playbooks

Skills and Playbooks work hand in hand:

Playbooks map out the overall process — what happens and in what order
Skills handle the details exactly how each step gets done

To add a Skill to a Playbook:

Option 1 (Settings panel):
1. Open your Playbook
2. Find the Skills section in the right-hand panel
3. Search and add the Skills you want
Option 2 (In-step): Use the / menu directly inside a Playbook step

💡TIP: Skills only load when they're actually needed during a run, so you can include several Skills in a Playbook without slowing things down.

Building Your Own Custom Skills

You can build a custom Skill without leaving your current Writer Agent session no need to navigate to the Skills settings at all.

Just type /skill-creator followed by a plain-language description of what you want the Skill to do:

/skill-creator Pull our weekly sales data from Salesforce and format it as a summary table with columns for rep name, deals closed, and revenue. Then convert it into a powerpoint presentation that has 3 slides - Closed revenue, forecasted revenue, and rep leaderboard.

What happens next:

Writer Agent takes your description and builds a complete Skill package on the spot
Once it's ready, you'll see a preview and the option toave it directly to your library
From there, the Skill is available to use in any future session or Playbook just like any other Skill you've installed

💡PRO TIP: The more specific your description, the better your Skill will be. Describe the task, the format you want the output in, and any steps the agent should always follow.

This is the fastest way to turn a one-off process into something repeatable especially useful when you've just figured out exactly how you want a task done and want to lock that in for next time.

💡PRO TIP: WRITER Agent is fantastic at correcting its errors. Try this prompt at the end of your WRITER Agent session to reduce the time it takes to get to your desired output next time.

Copy this:

Evaluate the entire current session. Review the steps taken and the error messages. Remove all steps that didn't contribute to the final outcome. Convert all useful steps into a skill using /skill-creator that is generalized for future sessions. The session can include examples but don't hard-code any logic to ensure it's flexible for additional use cases.