Skills
A skill is a reusable set of instructions — how your company writes a renewal brief, what belongs in an incident retro. Workflows load a skill when relevant, instead of copying the same instructions into every workflow that needs them.
How a skill loads
Skills load in stages:
- Metadata — name and description, always loaded (~100 tokens)
- Instructions — the body, loaded when the skill is triggered
- Resources — extra files (templates, examples), loaded if needed
The description is the only part Alma sees when deciding whether to use a skill. “Renewal brief” is a weak description. “How to write the pre-call brief for an account renewal — structure, tone, and what to check” gives Alma something to match against a task.
Creating a skill
Click New skill and fill in:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | The slug derives from it — lowercase, hyphenated |
| Description | Max 500 characters. This is what triggers the skill. |
| Instructions | The body — the actual how-to |
Write instructions the way you’d brief a new colleague: what good looks like, what to check, what to avoid.
What the Console can’t set yet
Coming soon. A skill supports more than the Console can author:
- Resources — extra template and example files
- Allowed tools — a whitelist restricting what the skill may call
- Model — pinning the skill to Sonnet, Opus, or Haiku
- Context mode — running the skill in isolated context
These display on the detail page if a skill has them, but there’s no way to set them from the Console — and skill detail is read-only, so you can’t edit a skill after creating it either. Use chat or the API instead.
Where skills get used
A workflow step loads a skill when the task calls for it. There’s no explicit wiring — the description is the matching surface, which is why it’s worth writing carefully.