Skills

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.formly.ai/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Skills are reusable instructions that tell the Formly assistant how you want it to work. Use them for repeat workflows, review styles, regulatory decision trees, reusable checklists, or output formats that you want the assistant to apply across future runs.

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Open Skills

Open Tools > Skills from the Formly app navigation. The Skills page has a searchable, filterable list on the left and the selected skill detail or form on the right. Use the toolbar to:

• search by skill name or description
• filter by visibility
• create a new skill
• upload a markdown file

Selecting a skill opens its details, including its description, instructions, author, last update, visibility, and enabled setting. If a form is open while a saved skill is selected, Formly asks before discarding unsaved form changes when you start another context-changing action.

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Create a skill

Click New skill and choose Create skill. The form opens in the right panel. Required fields:

• Name - a short, recognizable name using lowercase letters, numbers, and single hyphens, up to 64 characters, for example reviewer-voice.
• Description - what the skill does and when the assistant should use it.
• Visibility - who can access the skill.
• Content - markdown instructions for the assistant.

The content field should describe the future behavior you want. For example, tell the assistant what to check, what tone to use, what evidence to cite, or what format to return. Use Draft in Agent from a skill form when you want the assistant to help write or revise the skill. The assistant opens an editable draft card with the proposed name, description, visibility, and markdown content. Review the card and click Apply to create, edit, or duplicate the skill.

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Visibility

Choose the narrowest visibility that fits the skill:

• Private - only you can see and use it.
• Organization - members of your organization can see and use it.
• Global - a set of skills that Formly curates.

You can edit skills you created. If you cannot edit a shared skill, duplicate it to create your own version.

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Skill settings

Skills have separate run settings: Enabled controls whether a visible skill is active for your runs and appears in skill pickers. Turning Enabled off only changes your own preference; it does not affect other users. Disabled skills remain visible on the Skills page so you can enable them again.

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Create from chat

In an assistant thread, open the Skills menu and choose Create skill from chat. Formly fills the chat input with a reusable-skill request for the current conversation. Review or edit the prompt, then send it. The assistant uses the current thread context to draft the skill, then adds an editable draft card to the thread. Review the generated fields before applying:

• Name
• Description
• Visibility
• Markdown content

Edit the card if you want to change the name, instructions, or visibility. Clicking Apply saves the draft as a skill. If you ask for more changes instead of applying the card, the assistant keeps drafting and waits for confirmation before saving.

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Upload and download

Skills can be imported and exported as .md files. When uploading markdown:

• the skill name is prefilled from the filename
• optional frontmatter can prefill name, description, and visibility
• frontmatter is stripped from the saved content, and the remaining markdown body becomes the skill content
• the description is extracted from the first non-heading paragraph when possible

Review the imported fields before saving. Invalid or unavailable visibility values fall back to the normal form and permission rules. On the Skills page, use Download .md from a selected skill to export it.

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Edit, duplicate, and delete

Use Edit to update a skill you can modify. Edits update the saved skill directly. If you cannot edit a shared skill, use Duplicate. Duplicating creates an editable copy with the content prefilled. The copy defaults to private visibility unless you choose another available visibility. Only the creator can delete a skill. Deleting removes it from everyone who can access it and prevents it from loading in future runs.

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Apply skills in chat

To apply a skill only for a specific run:

1. Open the Skills menu in the chat composer.
2. Choose Attach skill to run.
3. Search for a skill and select it.
4. Send your prompt.

Attached skills appear as removable chips near the chat input. When the run starts, the assistant reads and applies the selected skill instructions for that response.

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MCP support

The Formly MCP server supports listing, reading, creating, editing, duplicating, deleting, and importing skills from markdown. External MCP clients can also include selected skills when starting a Formly agent run. When an external MCP assistant changes a skill, it should show the proposed change first, then save only after you approve it or after you have already given a clear save instruction.