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Skills are named workflows — sets of instructions for accomplishing specific tasks. Unlike rules which set ongoing behavior, skills are procedures that agents follow when a particular type of work comes up.

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What are skills?

A skill includes:
  • Name: Identifier used to invoke the skill
  • Description: When to use this skill
  • Instructions: Step-by-step guidance
  • Auto-invoke setting: Whether agents can trigger it automatically
On local workspaces, skills are stored as SKILL.md files in Qualia’s configuration directory. On Qualia Cloud, skills are stored with your account instead. Either way, they persist across sessions.

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Agent-triggerable vs manual

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Agent-triggerable skills

When enabled, the skill appears in the agent’s available tools:
  • Agents see the skill name and description
  • If a request matches, the agent loads and follows the skill
  • No action needed from you
Use agent-triggerable skills for workflows the AI should recognize and handle automatically:
  • “Analyze a time series column”
  • “Run exploratory data analysis on a new dataset”
  • “Train and evaluate a classification model”

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Manual-only skills

Must be explicitly invoked:
  • Not listed in agent context
  • Activated with /skill-name in chat
  • For workflows you want to control
Use manual skills for:
  • Sensitive operations
  • Workflows requiring specific timing
  • Procedures you want to invoke deliberately

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Creating skills

  1. Open Agent Customization (the briefcase icon) and select Skills
  2. Click New skill
  3. Enter:
    • Name: Lowercase with hyphens (e.g., time-series)
    • Description: When to use this skill (e.g., “Initial analysis of a time series column”)
    • Instructions: The workflow steps
    • Agent-triggerable: Whether agents auto-invoke

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Using skills

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Slash command

Invoke any skill with / followed by the skill name:
/time-series
The skill’s instructions are loaded and the agent follows them. Typing / opens a menu of your skills with their descriptions. Hover a skill and click the info button to open it in Agent Customization, or use Browse all in the menu header to open the full skills page.

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Agent auto-invocation

For agent-triggerable skills, just describe what you want:
“Analyze this time series data”
If you have a time-series skill with matching description, the agent recognizes the request and loads the skill.

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Skill structure

A well-designed skill includes:
  1. Context: What situation triggers this skill
  2. Steps: Ordered actions to take
  3. Verification: How to confirm success
  4. Error handling: What to do if something fails
Example skill content:

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Importing skills

Import from Cursor and Import from Claude Code read directories on the machine your workspace runs on, so they appear for local workspaces only. (Linking a folder, below, works on remote and self-hosted workspaces too.)

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From Cursor

  1. Open Agent Customization (the briefcase icon) and select Skills
  2. Click Import… > Import from Cursor
  3. Skills from ~/.cursor/skills/ are imported

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From Claude Code

  1. Click Import… > Import from Claude Code
  2. Skills from .claude/skills/ and legacy .claude/commands/ are imported

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Linked folders

Importing copies skills once — later edits in the source don’t change your copy. Linking instead keeps a folder as a live source: Qualia re-reads it on every turn, so edits in the source are reflected with no re-import step. This is the recommended way to consume a skills repository you maintain yourself.
  1. Open Agent Customization (the briefcase icon) and select Skills
  2. Click Linked folders
  3. Enter the absolute path to a directory of skill-name/SKILL.md subfolders on the workspace host, then click Link. When Qualia runs on your own machine, a Browse… button opens a native folder picker.
Each linked folder shows a validity indicator and how many skills it currently contributes, so a mistyped path or an empty folder isn’t a silent dead-end. Only the top level of the folder is scanned — a SKILL.md must sit directly in <folder>/<skill-name>/SKILL.md. Linked skills are read-only in Qualia: there’s no edit, delete, or mode toggle for them, and their auto-invoke setting is controlled by disable-model-invocation in the source SKILL.md. Edit them in the source repository. If a linked skill’s name collides with one you created in Qualia, your own skill takes precedence. Paths are resolved on the machine the workspace backend runs on, so linking works for local, remote, and self-hosted workspaces alike. It’s unavailable only in the multi-tenant hosted cloud.

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Skills vs rules

Use both together: rules for how to work, skills for what to do.

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Managing skills

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Viewing files

In Agent Customization > Skills, use Import… > Open skills folder to reveal the skills directory. Each skill has its own folder containing a SKILL.md file. (Cloud workspaces store skills with your account, so there is no folder to reveal; edit skills from the Skills tab instead.)

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Editing

Edit your own skills in Agent Customization > Skills or directly on disk. Changes are picked up automatically. Linked-folder skills are read-only in Qualia — edit them in their source repository instead.

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Deleting

Delete your own skills from Agent Customization > Skills; the skill is removed from storage. Linked-folder skills can’t be deleted here — remove the folder from Linked folders to unlink it, which never modifies the source.

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Best practices

Match skills to workflows: Each skill should correspond to a recognizable task. If you find yourself writing very long skills, consider breaking them into multiple smaller skills. Write clear descriptions: The description helps agents (and you) know when to use the skill. Be specific about triggers. Test agent triggering: After creating an agent-triggerable skill, verify it activates correctly with various phrasings of the same request. Version control your skills: Consider making your skills repository a git repository and synchronizing it across devices or projects.