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What is a skill

Skills are reusable sets of instructions and tool capabilities that can be shared across multiple AI agents. They allow you to define complex workflows once and apply them to any agent, ensuring consistency and improving precision.

What a skill contains​

A Skill in Ordify is a bundle that contains two things:

  1. Instructions: Step-by-step guidance or procedures that the agent follows to accomplish a task.
  2. Tools: A curated selection of specific actions (e.g., "read email," "create sheet," "send message") from specific applications (e.g., Gmail, Google Sheets, Slack) that the agent needs to execute those instructions.

This bundling is what makes skills powerful: an agent with a "Weekly Report" skill doesn't get access to every Gmail tool — only the specific ones the skill requires. This makes the agent faster and more accurate.

Why use skills​

  • Reduced tool bloat: Instead of loading every available tool from an app into an agent, skills load only the specific tools required for a particular workflow. This improves response speed and accuracy.
  • Reusable knowledge: Once you've perfected a workflow — for example, "Research and Summarize Competitors" — save it as a skill and attach it to any agent without rewriting the instructions.
  • Cross-agent compatibility: Skills work across agents, providing a consistent capability layer throughout the platform.
  • Content injection: When a skill is attached to an agent, its workflow instructions are automatically injected into the agent's backstory, giving the agent clear procedural guidance.

Skills in the Library​

Find and manage skills in the Library:

  • Public Skills: A curated collection of pre-built skills. Use these as templates or inspiration.
  • My Skills: Your personal collection of custom-built skills. Create, edit, archive, and share your own expertise here.

How skills work internally​

When you attach a skill to an agent:

  1. Selective tool loading: The system identifies the exact tools defined in the skill's schema (e.g., GMAIL_SEND_EMAIL) and loads only those tools — not all Gmail tools.
  2. Instruction injection: The skill's procedural instructions are appended to the agent's backstory, ensuring the agent remembers the specific workflow it needs to follow.

Summary​

Skills are the professional training for your AI agents. By bundling instructions with the right tools, they transform general-purpose agents into specialists capable of executing complex, multi-step business processes with precision.

Ready to build one? See Create a skill.