A Skill is a capability pack that can be added to agent applications, enabling agents to automatically handle specific types of tasks during conversations. With Skills, agents can gain professional capabilities such as file processing and data analysis without additional coding.
What is a Skill
After adding a Skill, the agent can automatically identify matching tasks during conversations and invoke the corresponding Skill to handle them, without additional code or external tool integration.
Model Studio provides two types of Skills:
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Official Skills: Pre-built general-purpose Skills provided by the platform, covering common file processing scenarios. No configuration required, ready to use after adding.
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Custom Skills: Created by uploading a ZIP skill pack. Suitable for business scenarios not covered by official Skills, such as industry-specific data processing or custom file format parsing.
Official Skills
Model Studio provides multiple official Skills covering common file processing scenarios. Official Skills are maintained by the platform. No configuration is required, and they are ready to use after adding.
Official Skills are continuously updated. You can view the latest list on the Skill Management page.
Custom Skills
When official Skills do not meet your business needs, you can create custom Skills by uploading a ZIP skill pack. The ZIP skill pack must meet the following requirements:
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Requirement |
Description |
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Must include SKILL.md |
The root directory of the ZIP package must contain a |
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Size limit |
The entire ZIP package must not exceed 10 MB. |
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Unique name |
The |
SKILL.md specification
SKILL.md uses YAML format to define the Skill name and description. The format is as follows:
name: my-custom-skill
description: "Description of the Skill's capabilities, including trigger conditions, applicable scenarios, and inapplicable scenarios."
Field description
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Field |
Required |
Description |
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name |
Yes |
The unique identifier name for the Skill. Use lowercase letters and hyphens, such as |
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description |
Yes |
Describes the trigger conditions and processing capabilities of the Skill. The agent uses this description to determine whether to invoke the Skill, so the quality of the description directly affects invocation accuracy. |
Best practices for writing the description
The quality of the description determines how accurately the agent invokes the Skill. Include the following information:
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Applicable input types: Specify the file formats or data types the Skill processes.
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Supported operations: List the specific operations the Skill can perform.
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Trigger keywords: Keywords or expressions that may appear in user conversations and should trigger the Skill.
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Inapplicable scenarios: Mark scenarios where the Skill should not be triggered to avoid false invocations.
Complete example
The following is the SKILL.md example for the official xlsx Skill:
name: xlsx
description: "Use this skill any time a spreadsheet file is the primary input or output. This means any task where the user wants to: open, read, edit, or fix an existing .xlsx, .xlsm, .csv, or .tsv file (e.g., adding columns, computing formulas, formatting, charting, cleaning messy data); create a new spreadsheet from scratch or from other data sources; or convert between tabular file formats. Trigger especially when the user references a spreadsheet file by name or path — even casually (like \"the xlsx in my downloads\") — and wants something done to it or produced from it. Also trigger for cleaning or restructuring messy tabular data files (malformed rows, misplaced headers, junk data) into proper spreadsheets. The deliverable must be a spreadsheet file. Do NOT trigger when the primary deliverable is a Word document, HTML report, standalone Python script, database pipeline, or Google Sheets API integration, even if tabular data is involved."
This example:
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Specifies supported file formats (.xlsx, .xlsm, .csv, .tsv).
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Lists applicable operations (reading, editing, creating, format conversion, data cleaning, etc.).
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Includes trigger scenario descriptions (should also trigger when users mention file names or paths).
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Marks inapplicable scenarios (when the deliverable is a Word document, HTML, Python script, etc.).
Upload and create
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In the left navigation pane of the console, choose .
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Click Custom Skill in the upper-right corner.
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In the dialog box, click the upload area to select a ZIP file, or drag and drop the file into the upload area.
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Click Confirm to submit.
After submission, the system automatically reviews the Skill content. The review takes approximately 2 minutes.
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Review passed: The Skill appears on the Custom Skills tab and can be added to agent applications.
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Review failed: Modify the SKILL.md content based on the error message and re-upload.
Update a custom Skill
When you re-upload a ZIP package with the same Skill name, the system creates a new version. The update process is the same as the initial creation:
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Modify the content in the local ZIP package (for example, update the description in SKILL.md).
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On the Custom Skills tab, re-upload the ZIP package.
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After the review passes, agents that have already added this Skill will automatically use the latest version.
Add a Skill to an agent
You can add a Skill (official or custom) to an agent application through the following two methods. After adding, the agent will automatically invoke the Skill when it encounters tasks matching the Skill description during conversations.
Method 1: Add from the Skill details page
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In the left navigation pane of the console, choose , and click a Skill card to go to the details page.
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Click Add to Agent in the upper-right corner.
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Select the target application from the pop-up application list and confirm.
Method 2: Add from application configuration
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Go to the Application Configuration page of the target agent application.
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In the left configuration panel, find the Skills section and click the plus icon next to Skill.
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Select the desired Skill from the Skill list and confirm.
View Skill details
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In the left navigation pane of the console, choose .
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On the Official Skills or Custom Skills tab, click a Skill card to go to the details page.
The details page contains two tabs:
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Overview: Displays the Skill name, current version number, feature description, and attribute information. You can switch to view historical versions using the version dropdown.
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Update Log: Displays the release time and change details for all versions of the Skill.
Official Skills are uniformly maintained and updated by the platform. Official Skills added to agents automatically use the latest version. Custom Skills are updated by re-uploading a ZIP package with the same name.
Test Skill effects
After adding a Skill, you can test the results in the chat panel on the right side of the application configuration page.
For example, send the following in the chat panel: Create a spreadsheet with this month's sales data, organized by region
The agent will invoke the xlsx Skill to generate a .xlsx file with regional statistics and provide a download link.