Introducing Skills: Extend Your Agent with Powerful Capabilities

Today we're excited to introduce Skills - a powerful new system that lets you extend your AI agent's capabilities with modular, plug-and-play features.

Think of Skills as specialized tools your agent can use when needed. Each Skill includes prompting instructions that tell the agent exactly when and how to use it, plus optional code that implements the skill's logic. Your agent reads these instructions and automatically decides which skills to activate based on your request.

Skills transform your general-purpose AI assistant into a specialized powerhouse - capable of deep research, image generation, data analysis, and whatever custom capabilities you build.

The Skills system is designed to be both powerful and intuitive:

1. Enable Skills Toggle on the skills you want available for your session. You can enable multiple skills at once.

2. Write Your Prompt Just ask your agent to do something naturally, like you always do. No special syntax needed.

3. Agent Decides Your agent reads the prompting instructions for each enabled skill and automatically picks the right one based on your request.

4. Skill Executes The skill runs its code (if any) and returns results to your agent, which incorporates them into its response.

This natural activation means you don't need to memorize commands or syntax. Just describe what you want, and your agent figures out which skill to use.

Every workspace comes with powerful skills pre-installed. Enable them with one click and start using advanced capabilities immediately.

Deep Research Conduct comprehensive research on any topic using Gemini Deep Research API. This skill excels at:

• Multi-source research synthesis
• Academic paper analysis
• Market trend research
• Fact-checking with citations

Example: "Research the current state of quantum computing and its potential applications in cryptography"

Web Search Access real-time information from the web with intelligent summarization:

• Real-time search results
• News aggregation
• Source verification
• Automatic summary generation

Example: "What are the latest developments in AI regulation in the EU?"

Image Generation Create stunning visuals from text descriptions using advanced diffusion models:

• Text-to-image generation
• Multiple art styles (photorealistic, illustration, abstract, etc.)
• High-resolution output up to 1024x1024
• Style customization

Example: "Generate a watercolor painting of a sunset over mountains with a small cabin"

Don't see a skill you need? Create your own. The Skills system is fully extensible, letting you build custom capabilities tailored to your workflow.

Writing Skill Prompting Every skill starts with prompting - instructions that tell the agent when and how to use your skill:

• Usage: Describe when your skill should be invoked
• Process: Outline the step-by-step execution
• Output Format: Define what results look like
• Configuration: List any options or parameters
• Example Prompts: Show sample invocations

Your agent reads this prompting and learns to recognize when your skill is the right tool for the job.

Adding Custom Code Skills can include Python code that implements specialized functionality:

Your code can integrate with APIs, process files, run computations, or perform any task your workflow requires.

Here are some ideas for custom skills you might build:

Data Analysis Skill Process CSV files, generate visualizations, and extract insights automatically.

Email Composer Skill Draft professional emails based on context, maintaining your preferred tone and style.

Code Review Skill Analyze code for bugs, security issues, and style violations with your team's standards.

Translation Skill Translate content between languages with domain-specific terminology.

Meeting Notes Skill Summarize meeting recordings into action items and key decisions.

Report Generator Skill Transform data into formatted reports with charts and executive summaries.

API Integration Skill Connect to your internal APIs and services to fetch or update data.

The possibilities are endless - if you can write Python code for it, you can make it a skill.

Managing skills is straightforward in the Skills app:

Enable/Disable Skills Toggle skills on or off per conversation. Keep your agent focused by only enabling what you need.

Edit Prompting Customize how your agent interprets and uses each skill by editing the prompting instructions.

Modify Code For custom skills, edit the code directly in the built-in editor with syntax highlighting.

Open in CoCreate For more complex editing, open skill files in CoCreate for a full IDE experience with AI assistance.

Organize by Category Skills are organized into categories (Research, Creative, Development, Custom) for easy browsing.

System vs Custom Skills System skills (Deep Research, Web Search, Image Generation) are managed by the platform but can be enabled/disabled. Custom skills are fully editable.

Skills fundamentally change how you work with AI agents:

Modular & Extensible Add new capabilities without changing your agent's core configuration. Skills are plug-and-play.

Context-Aware Skills understand when to activate based on your prompt, making interactions natural and intuitive.

Secure Execution Skills run in isolated environments with controlled access to resources and APIs.

Shareable Build a skill once, use it across all your workspaces. In the future, share skills with your team or the community.

Version Control Track changes, roll back updates, and maintain multiple versions of your skills.

Ready to supercharge your agent with Skills?

Enable Built-in Skills

1. Open the Skills app from your dock
2. Browse the available system skills
3. Toggle on the ones you want to use
4. Start a conversation and watch them activate automatically

Create Your First Custom Skill

1. Click "New Skill" in the Skills app
2. Give it a name and description
3. Write the prompting instructions
4. Add your Python code (optional)
5. Save and enable your skill

That's it! Your agent now has a new capability. Test it out by asking something that matches your skill's usage description.

Skills represent a major step forward in making AI agents truly customizable and powerful. We can't wait to see what you build.