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A skill is a set of procedural instructions written in plain language that teaches an agent how to perform a specific task. Skills go beyond answering questions — they tell the agent exactly what steps to follow, what data to pull, and what output to deliver. Skills are separate from the ontology. The ontology defines what things are (metrics, dimensions, entities). A skill defines how to do something with that data — the step-by-step procedure an agent follows when a task is triggered. While a custom agent defines the persona (who is doing the work), skills define the tasks (what work gets done). Skills are portable — you write a skill once and assign it to any number of agents.
Wayak organization skills interface

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What a skill looks like

A skill is a markdown description with:
  • A name — what the skill is called (e.g., “Calculate work order variance”)
  • A trigger — how the skill gets activated (user request, keyword, scheduled)
  • Instructions — step-by-step procedural guidance in plain language
  • Output — what the agent returns or delivers
The instructions are the core of a skill. They read like a procedure manual — clear, specific, and actionable.

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Example

Here is what a skill definition looks like in practice:
Name: Calculate work order varianceTrigger: User asks about production cost variance or work order costsInstructions:
  1. Identify the work order number from the user’s request.
  2. Pull the estimated cost from the work order header (planned labor + planned materials + planned overhead).
  3. Pull the actual cost by summing all posted transactions against the work order (actual labor hours x rate, actual material issues, applied overhead).
  4. Calculate the variance: actual cost minus estimated cost.
  5. Break the variance into three categories: labor variance, material variance, and overhead variance.
  6. If the total variance exceeds 10%, flag it and list the top contributing line items.
  7. Present results in a table with estimated, actual, and variance columns.
Output: A variance summary table with a flag if the variance exceeds the threshold.
Notice how the skill is purely procedural — it doesn’t define what a “work order” is (that’s the ontology’s job) or how to talk to the user (that’s the agent’s persona). It only describes how to calculate the variance.

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More examples

SkillWhat it does
Draft customer replyReads the incoming email, detects the issue type, and writes a response following the company’s tone guidelines
Generate weekly reportQueries defined metrics, formats a summary, and delivers to a channel
Look up customerFinds a customer across data sources and returns a consolidated profile
Create alertMonitors a metric and notifies the team when a threshold is crossed

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Skills vs. custom agents

A skill packages how to do something — the instructions for a specific task. A custom agent packages who is doing it — the persona, data access, and behavioral guidelines.
SkillCustom agent
DefinesA procedure — how to perform a taskA persona — who the agent is
ContentStep-by-step instructions in markdownRole, goal, tone, and behavioral guidelines
PortabilityAssign to multiple agentsEach agent is a unique configuration
Relationship to ontologySeparate — uses ontology concepts but doesn’t define themScopes which parts of the ontology the agent can see

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Skills vs. playbooks

Skills are individual capabilities — a single action or short sequence. Playbooks are full automations that chain multiple skills and logic together into complex workflows.

See examples by industry

Browse concrete agent and skill examples for manufacturing, customer service, insurance, and more.