A skill is a written procedure the assistant loads when it is relevant — your way of qualifying a lead, the exact shape your QBR summary should take, how your team calculates win rate. Save it once and every future answer follows it.
This article covers:
- What a skill is for
- Creating one
- Managing skills
- Skills, context and memory
What a skill is for
Use a skill when there is a right way to do something that recurs, and you keep re-explaining it. The description on the Skills page puts it well: procedural recipes the agent loads on demand.
Good candidates:
- "How we qualify an inbound lead" — the checks, in order, and what disqualifies
- "Our monthly account review" — which figures, in which order, with which comparison
- "How we work out win rate" — so two people asking get the same number
Upsales ships a set of these already — inbound lead qualifier, open pipeline lookup, closed deals in a period, win rate calculation and others. They are marked Upsales and seeded on the Skills page, and you can switch any of them off.
Creating one
The easy way is to ask, right after the assistant has done something well:
"Save that as a skill so you always do the account review that way."
It writes the procedure and asks whether it is just for you or for the whole team.
Or go to Settings → Skills and click + New skill. Import brings one in from a file.
When you write one yourself, the description matters as much as the steps — it is what decides when the skill gets loaded. "Use when the user asks about win rate, hit rate or close rate" will fire; "Win rate stuff" will not.
Managing skills
Settings → Skills lists everything active, grouped by where it came from, with a toggle on each. Turning one off leaves it in place but stops it being used — the right move when a procedure changes and you are not yet sure of the new one.
A skill saved for the team applies to everyone, so agree the procedure before you save it that way.
Skills, context and memory
- Skill — how to do something. A procedure, loaded when it is relevant.
- Context — what to refer to. Documents and links for one agent.
- Memory — what you prefer. Standing facts, always applied.
If you find yourself explaining the same sequence of steps a third time, that is a skill.