Abilities and Skills

What your agent is allowed to do: core abilities with toggles, installed skills, and the catalog. Plus why a third-party skill is a risk.

Your agent can read files, run programs in its container, and go online, and each of these can be turned off with a single toggle. Abilities set the limits of what it can do at all: if an ability is off, the agent won’t use it, no matter how nicely you ask.

Core abilities

Settings → Abilities. The top three abilities can be toggled; the rest are always on.

Ability	What it gives	Turn it off when
Files	Read and create files in its own storage	Almost never: without files, the agent loses its memory of the work
Command Execution	Run programs inside its container	This is the first thing to turn off if anyone else is messaging the agent
Memory	Remember important things between conversations	Only if you need a one-off agent that doesn’t build up knowledge about you
Internet	Search for information and open websites	Always on
Interface	Open websites in a browser and show images	Always on
Conversations	Search past conversations	Always on

Command Execution is the most powerful and most dangerous ability: it’s a full command line. If anyone besides you has access to the agent, turn it off and enable it only for specific tasks.

Installed skills

Further down the same tab is the list of skills. A new agent comes with several dozen. A skill is an instruction file: the agent reads it and learns something new.

What you see on the card	What it means
Skill name	The technical name, usually in English
Ready	The skill works and is ready to use
Setup Required	The agent is missing something, most often access or a key
Toggle	Turns the skill on and off
Trash can	Deletes the skill

Toggling a skill restarts the agent: chats and scheduled tasks pause for about a minute.

The Filter installed skills field searches the list. With several dozen skills, it’s faster than scrolling.

Catalog

Settings → Catalog has new skills and plugins. There’s a Skills / Plugins switch, a category filter, and Top and Trending collections.

Each card shows the author, rating, install count, and last update date. The Install button installs the skill, and the agent picks it up after a restart.

A skill is text with instructions that the agent follows without a second thought. A downloaded file can hide a command to collect your keys and send them to a third party. Don’t install skills from unknown authors: it’s safer to ask an AI to write the skill you need from scratch for your task. Learn more in Security and Access.

What to check before installing: a well-known author, lots of installs, a recent update. This lowers the risk but doesn’t remove it, so read what’s inside.

FAQ

The skill is installed, but the agent doesn't use it

Tell it directly: “use skill such-and-such.” The agent picks its tools on its own and doesn’t always guess right. If it says it’s missing data, check the status: Setup Required means some access is missing.

The agent stopped responding after I installed a skill

It’s restarting, so wait half a minute. If it doesn’t come back, turn off the new skill and run Diagnostics in Maintenance.

How do I know a skill is safe?

There’s no full guarantee. Look at the author, install count, and update date. You can also open the file itself on the Files tab and read it: it’s plain text. Anything that asks to send data outside is a reason to pass.

The agent refused to install a skill on its own

That happens: it may find a skill suspicious and tell you so. That’s a good sign, but don’t rely on this check. The decision is still yours.

How are skills different from AI Employee talents?

They’re similar in purpose: both extend what can be done. But talents connect an AI Employee to your external systems and are configured at the AI Employee level, while skills live inside a specific agent’s container.

What’s next

Security and Access

Five rules that prevent most of the pain

Models

What the agent thinks with

Files

Where skills physically live

Maintenance

What to do if a skill broke everything