Introduction to Skills

Skills are reusable instruction sets that an agent applies automatically when they are relevant, giving every response the right context without extra setup.

A Skill is a reusable set of instructions stored in Odeus, optionally bundled with the tools it needs. Think of it as a briefing document for the agent. When a Skill is attached to an Agent — or set as a workspace Skill — its description is available to the agent on every turn. The agent reads each Skill's description to decide which ones are relevant to your message, then follows the instructions automatically. You do not have to mention a Skill by name.

• Creating Skills — Write instructions manually, or generate them with chat.

• System Skills — Built-in Skills that power file generation, visualization, and document reading.

How Skills work

A Skill has four parts:

• Name — a short, human-readable title.
• Description — one or two sentences telling the agent when this Skill should be used. This is what the agent reads to decide whether the Skill is relevant.
• Instructions — the actual content (plain text or Markdown): what to do, how to format the output, what to include or avoid.
• Tools (optional) — the Skill can bundle the tools the agent is allowed to use while the Skill is active.

When an agent runs, its attached Skills are synced into the run. The agent matches your message against each Skill's description, loads the matching instructions into context, and applies them.

The description field is what the agent uses to decide whether a Skill is relevant. "Use when asked for a status update or progress summary" is far more effective than "Status reports." The more specific the description, the more reliably the Skill activates at the right moment.

Good use cases for Skills

• Recurring outputs. Status reports, meeting notes, and project summaries that always follow the same structure.
• Formatting rules. Always use bullet points, always reply in a specific language, always cite sources.
• Workflow guidance. How to handle a support ticket, how to draft a contract clause.
• Tool-aware tasks. Bundle the tools a task needs alongside the instructions for using them.
• Team standards. Set a Skill's visibility to your workspace so everyone produces consistent outputs.

Visibility: private vs workspace

Every Skill you create has a visibility setting:

• Private — only you can see and use it.
• Workspace — everyone in your workspace can use it.

Set visibility when you create the Skill, or change it later from the Skill's detail view.

Skills and Agents

You can attach Skills directly to an Agent. When a Skill is attached, it is active whenever someone uses that Agent — no per-user installation required.

Skills and Agents serve different but complementary purposes. An Agent is a configured environment for a domain, with its own instructions, knowledge, and tools. A Skill is a focused set of instructions (and optionally tools) that the agent applies automatically when relevant. Moving generic behavior — tone of voice, output formats, brand guidelines — into Skills keeps an Agent focused on what makes it specific.

To attach a Skill to an Agent, open the Agent's configuration and add it from the Skills section.

System Skills

Odeus ships with built-in System Skills that are always active, with no setup required. They power core tasks such as file generation (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX), data visualization, and reading uploaded files.

See System Skills for the full list.