Skills
Reusable instruction sets that give agents domain expertise and best-practice guidance.
Overview
Skills are curated sets of instructions that enhance an agent's capabilities for specific tasks. Think of them as domain-specific playbooks — when a skill is attached to a plan step, the agent receives additional context and guidance on how to approach the work.
For example, a "Market Analysis" skill provides structured instructions for researching competitors, analyzing market trends, and presenting findings.
Built-in Skills
Agentican includes hundreds of pre-built skills spanning areas like:
- Research & Analysis — Market research, competitive analysis, data synthesis
- Content Creation — Blog posts, reports, presentations, social media
- Engineering — Code review, architecture design, documentation
- Sales — Prospecting, lead qualification, proposal writing
- Operations — Process optimization, compliance checks, reporting
Available vs. Catalog
Like agents, skills are managed through two sections:
- Available — Skills active for your team that can be attached to plan steps
- Catalog — Additional skills you can add
Research competitors, analyze market positioning, and identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.
Compiles financial data, KPIs, and highlights into a structured quarterly business review document.
Write engaging, SEO-optimized blog posts with clear structure, compelling headlines, and actionable takeaways.
Evaluate code quality, identify bugs and security issues, and suggest improvements following best practices.
Custom Skills
Create skills specific to your organization's workflows. Click Create Skill and provide:
- Name — A clear, descriptive name
- Description — What the skill helps agents do
- Instructions — Detailed guidance the agent follows when this skill is active
- Toolkit (optional) — Associate a tool integration with the skill
- Team — Which department owns this skill
1. Summarize key financial metrics (revenue, margins, cash flow)
2. Highlight top wins and challenges from the quarter
3. Include KPI trends with quarter-over-quarter comparisons
4. End with strategic recommendations for next quarter
Tip: Write skill instructions as if you're onboarding a new team member. Include your organization's specific terminology, standards, and preferred approaches.
Using Skills in Plans
Skills are attached at the step level in a plan. When a step executes, the agent receives the combined instructions from:
- The agent's own role/persona instructions
- The step-specific instructions
- Any attached skills' instructions
This layered approach means a general-purpose agent can gain specialized expertise through skills, making them more versatile without creating dozens of narrow agents.
Toolkit Association
Some skills are associated with a specific toolkit. For example, a "Slack Channel Summary" skill might be linked to the Slack toolkit. When the skill is attached to a step, the associated toolkit is automatically available to the agent.