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Agent Skills: Tailoring What Your Agent Can Do (Coming Soon!)

Skills extend what your WorkBoardAI agent can do. Learn where skills come from, how to upload your own, how to turn them on or off per agent, and who can manage them.

A skill is a set of instructions that extends what your agent knows how to do. Think of it as teaching your agent a specific job — how to build a PDF the way your company formats them, how to run your particular QBR prep, or how to structure a business case the way your leadership expects.

Skills are supported by your AI Chief of Staff (Luisa), your AI Leadership Coach (Sofia), and the Portfolio Analyst agent. Each skill can be switched on or off independently, per agent.

What to use skills for

Skills pay off on work your organization does the same way every time — the standards you apply, the templates you reuse, and the conventions people currently learn by asking a colleague. The examples below are starting points, not finished skills.

Standardize the documents or reports your agent produces

  • Business case — your required sections: problem, approach, the Key Result it moves, investment, risks, decision requested

  • Board or executive reporting — the metric set, level of detail, and what never goes in front of your board

  • Quarterly narrative — committed versus delivered, what changed and why, what carries forward

Define the structure once and your agent follows it whether the output is Word, PDF, or slides.

Teach your agent your vocabulary

The simplest high-value skill: your internal language. List your acronyms, product names, team taxonomy, and fiscal calendar. This stops your agent from guessing and improves nearly every answer it gives.

Make workstreams repeatable

If your team runs the same kind of project repeatedly, a skill turns "set up the workstream" into one sentence.

  1. New Hire Onboarding

    1. The standard actions, grouped by phase — before day one, week one, first 30 days, first 90; who owns what by role — hiring manager, buddy, IT, HR

    2. Due dates relative to the start date, so they resolve for any hire

Anatomy of a skill

A skill doesn't need to be long — it needs to be specific. Answer four questions, as the sketch above does:

  • When should the agent use this? Name the phrases people will actually say.

  • What data should it work from? Which OKRs, teams, or leaders.

  • What should it do or check? Your rules, in order.

  • What should the output look like? Format, structure, and who gets any follow-up.

Naming specific people, teams, and business units is not only allowed — it's usually the point. That's what turns a generic review into your organization's review.

Type of Skills Agents come from

Your agent can draw on three kinds of skills:

Type

Who creates it

Who can see it

Org skill

Your IT Policy Admin

Everyone in your organization, once the admin shares it

Personal skill

You

Only you, on your own agents

Viewing your skills

  1. Open your agent and go to Settings.

  2. Select the Skills tab.

  3. You'll see every skill available to this agent, grouped by source, each with a toggle.

For skills you or your admin uploaded, you'll also see:

  • Who uploaded it — your own skills show as "Uploaded by you." IT Policy Admins see the actual uploader's name across the organization.

  • When it was uploaded

  • Whether it's shared org-wide

Turning skills on and off

Enable and disable is controlled per user, per agent. Your choices are yours alone — turning a skill off doesn't affect anyone else, and an admin sharing a skill org-wide doesn't force it on for everybody.

You can toggle:

  • Any WorkBoard-provided skill on your agents

  • Any org skill available to you

  • Your own personal skills

Turning a skill off doesn't delete it — it just stops that agent from using it.

Uploading your own skill

Any user can upload a personal skill for their own agents.

  1. Write your skill as a markdown (.md) file. Describe the task clearly: what the skill is for, when the agent should use it, and the steps or format it should follow.

  2. Go to Settings → Skills and select Upload skill.

  3. Choose your .md file.

  4. Toggle it on for the agents you want to use it.

Writing a good skill

  • Must:

    • Please upload a .md file containing the skill name and prompt in markdown

    • File needs a title: skill name

      • The frontmatter title becomes the skill name

        • Example: (title: My Skill Name)

  • Be specific about when to use it. Your agent decides whether a skill applies based on how you've described it — a vague description means the skill may not trigger when you expect.

  • Describe the output you want. Format, structure, section order, tone.

  • Include your conventions. Naming standards, required fields, what to leave out.

  • Keep it focused. One skill per job works better than one skill that tries to cover everything.

Note: Personal skills can't be edited in place today. To change one, delete it and upload the revised file.

Sharing a skill across your organization

If you have the IT Policy Admin role, you can upload a skill and share it with everyone in your organization. Org skills are useful for standardizing how agents handle company-specific work — your board reporting format, your business case template, your review structure.

  1. Go to Settings → Skills and select Upload skill.

  2. Choose your .md file and upload it

  3. Once uploaded, you can click on the kebob icon to Share with my organization.

Once shared, the skill appears in every user's Skills tab in your organization. The Skill is turned on by default, but each person can still choose whether to turn it on or off for their own agents at any time.

IT Policy Admins can also delete an org skill after upload.

Deleting skills

Skill type

Who can delete it

Personal

Only the person who uploaded it

Org

Any person with IT Policy Admin role — including one who didn't upload it

No one can delete another user's personal skill.

Permissions at a glance

Capability

IT Policy Admin

Standard User

Push a skill to all customers, all agents

—

—

Push a skill to specific agents

—

—

Upload a skill to own agents only

Yes

Yes

Upload a skill shared org-wide

Yes

—

Edit an org skill

Yes

—

Enable / disable a skill per agent

Yes

Yes

Delete own uploaded skill

Yes

Yes

Delete an org skill uploaded by another admin

Yes

—

Delete another user's personal skill

—

—

Important notes

  • Skills are uploaded as markdown (.md) files.

  • A skill doesn't grant your agent new data access. It shapes how your agent does work within the permissions you already have.

  • Personal skills are visible only to you.

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