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What is a Skill?

A skill is a collection of related tools bundled together. It defines what capabilities your agent has and how to use them.

Think of it as:

A capability module - like “Customer Service” or “Order Management” - that groups related tools together
Skills are now added to your agent through the LuaAgent class. See Agent Concept for the complete configuration pattern.

Anatomy of a Skill

Name

Unique identifier for the skill

Version

Semantic version tracking

Description

Brief summary of capability

Context

Most Important: How/when to use tools

Tools

Array of tool instances

The Context Field: Most Important Part

The context field tells the AI agent how and when to use the tools in your skill.
The context field is critical! Without good context, the AI won’t know when to use your tools or how to use them correctly.

What Good Context Looks Like

Problems:
  • Too vague
  • No tool guidance
  • No usage instructions
  • Agent won’t know what to do

Context Field Structure

Good Skill Examples

Example 1: E-commerce Skill

Example 2: Support Skill

Example 3: Booking Skill

Key Principles

1. One Skill = One Purpose

2. Context is Your Guide

The context field is where you teach the AI how to be effective:

3. Include Tool Descriptions

Explain when and how to use each tool:

Managing Skills

Build

Write skills in src/index.ts

Test

Test individual tools

Deploy

Push to production

Monitor

View deployed versions

Multi-Skill Projects

You can have multiple skills in one project:
Benefits:
  • Logical separation
  • Independent versioning
  • Clear ownership
  • Easier maintenance

Advanced: Channel-Aware Contexts

For most skills, a single context works great. But if you need different instructions per channel (e.g., voice gets conversational guidance, text gets structured formatting tips), see Channel-aware Prompts.

Next Steps

Learn About Tools

Understand what tools are and how to build them

Persona Command

Complete guide to managing personas

See Examples

11 complete skill implementations

Build Your First Skill

Step-by-step tutorial