Step 6: Skills
A skill is like a specialist your agent can call in when a job needs a particular knack — a number-cruncher, a translator, a tidy-up expert. Tools let your agent reach out to other services, and knowledge gives it reference material to read, but skills give it the ability to run a piece of custom logic — transforming data, working through a multi-step process, or doing a specialized calculation — and use the result in its reply.
Why it matters
Some requests need more than a look-up or an answer pulled from a document. They need a bit of work done: reformatting a messy list, converting a file from one format to another, running a calculation that follows specific rules every time.
Skills let your agent handle exactly those jobs without you having to wire up an outside service. You add the skill once, and from then on the agent reaches for it whenever a request calls for it — for example, turning a block of text into a clean summary, or converting a spreadsheet of data into a different layout.
How it works
A skill is a self-contained package of logic that your agent can run when it needs that specific ability. When a user's request matches what a skill does, the agent runs the skill and folds the result into its response.
Skills come in three kinds, depending on where they come from:
| Type | Where it comes from | Can you remove it? |
|---|---|---|
| Native | Built into every agent. Handles common tasks with no setup. | No — native skills are always available |
| Community | Shared by the Nirvai community for anyone to install. | Yes |
| Custom | Built by you for your agent's specific needs. | Yes |
Installing a community skill
- Open your agent in the Agent Control Panel
- Go to the Skills panel
- Switch to the Community tab to browse what's available
- Use the search bar or filter by category to find what you need
- Click Install on any skill to add it to your agent
Image: The skills panel showing installed skills and the community library
Reuse a skill from another agent
If you've already built or installed a skill on one of your agents, you don't have to recreate it from scratch on the next one — you can copy it across. It's like photocopying a trained teammate's playbook for another teammate: the new agent gets its own copy, so editing or removing the skill on one agent never affects the other.
Under the My Skills tab, below this agent's own skills, an "Available from your other agents" list shows skills that live on your other agents and can be copied here.
Image: The My Skills tab showing the list of skills available from your other agents
A few things to know:
- It only shows your own agents. This is for reusing skills across the agents you own — nothing is shared with other people.
- The skill's tools come along too. A skill often relies on tools (for example, a tool that sends email). When you copy the skill, the tools it needs are added to this agent automatically.
- Each copy is independent. The copied skill is a separate item with its own files. Changing it later on one agent won't change it on the other.
The 25-tool limit
Every agent can have up to 25 tools in total (custom tools and database tools combined). Because copying a skill can bring tools with it, each available skill tells you whether it fits:
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Ready to add | The skill needs no new tools (or only built-in ones, which are always free) — copy it anytime. |
| N slots left | The skill brings some new tools, but you have room. Adding it stays within your 25-tool limit. |
| Over limit | The skill brings more new tools than you have room for. Remove a tool or another skill first, then try again. |
Only new tools count — any tool this agent already has, and any built-in tool, is free.
Adding a skill from another agent
- Open your agent and go to the Skills panel.
- On the My Skills tab, scroll to "Available from your other agents".
- Each skill shows the agent it comes from and the tools it includes, right on the card.
- Click Add, optionally give the copy a new name, then confirm.
The skill — and any new tools it needs — is copied onto this agent and appears in your skill list right away.
Copies are independent. If you want the same change on both agents, you have to make it on each one separately — edit the skill on each agent in Developer Mode.
To see and manage every skill across all your agents in one place — and copy any of them to another agent — open Your Skills Library.
Managing your installed skills
The My Skills tab lists every skill installed on the selected agent. Each one appears as a card you can click to expand:
- The collapsed view shows the skill name, a short description, its status (active or inactive), and a source badge (native, community, or custom).
- The expanded view shows the full description, the inputs the skill accepts, its source and version, an enable/disable toggle, and a remove button for community and custom skills.
Flip the enable/disable toggle to turn a skill on or off without removing it — a disabled skill stays in your list, ready to switch back on. To uninstall a community or custom skill, click Remove in its expanded view. Native skills can't be removed.
Examples
Community skills you might install
| Example skill | What it does |
|---|---|
| Data formatter | Converts data between formats (CSV, JSON, tables) |
| Calculator | Performs complex math |
| Summarizer | Condenses long text into a structured summary |
| Translator | Translates text between languages |
| Code runner | Runs code snippets and returns the result |
A summarizer in action
A customer pastes three paragraphs of feedback into the chat. Your agent recognizes that a summary would help, runs the Summarizer skill, and replies with a clean three-bullet recap instead of the wall of text.
Common mistakes
| Mistake | Why it's a problem | Better approach |
|---|---|---|
| Reaching for a skill to talk to an outside service | Skills run logic on Nirvai's side — they don't sign in to your calendar or CRM | Use a tool to interact with an external service, and a skill for processing logic |
| Leaving every community skill installed "just in case" | Extra skills add clutter and can confuse which one the agent picks | Install only the skills that match what your agent actually does, and disable the rest |
| Expecting custom skills with no setup | Custom skills are written as code packages | Build them in Developer Mode, or stick to native and community skills |
| Expecting a copied skill to update when you change the original | Copies from another agent are independent — each agent keeps its own version | Edit the skill on each agent in Developer Mode, or keep the shared logic on a single agent |
Skills vs. tools at a glance
| Skills | Tools | |
|---|---|---|
| What they are | Code that runs logic | Connections to external services |
| Where they run | On Nirvai's servers | On the external service |
| What they need | A code package | Sign-in details for the service |
| Best for | Custom logic, data processing, calculations | Working with external services (calendars, CRMs, databases) |
| Created by | The community or you | You, or set up through a connector |
Creating custom skills
If you have development experience, you can build your own skills in Developer Mode. The create_skill developer command walks you through authoring a new skill. A custom skill defines its name and description (how the agent knows when to use it), the inputs it expects, the logic that runs when it's called, and any tools it uses along the way.
What's next
- Step 7: Channels — put your finished agent in front of users on WhatsApp, Slack, your website, and more.
- Developer Mode — the full workflow for building custom skills.