Skills
A skill is a set of instructions a bot loads when a task calls for it, like your house style for reports or the steps for cleaning up a spreadsheet. Skills keep a bot's standing instructions short: the bot always knows which skills it has, and reads the full text only when it needs one.
How skills work
Every run, a bot sees the name and one-line description of each enabled skill it can use. When a task matches a description, the bot loads that skill's full instructions. The chat shows this as Loaded skill …. Any files that come with the skill are copied to ~/skills/<name>/ on the bot's computer, so its scripts can run there.
A skill belongs either to the whole workspace, so every bot can use it, or to one bot.
You can also make sure a bot uses a skill: type / in the message field and pick it. See Chatting with a bot.
The skill format
Casama uses the open Agent Skills layout, so skills written for other apps that read it work here too. A skill is a folder with a SKILL.md file and, optionally, other files:
weekly-report/
├── SKILL.md
├── template.md
└── scripts/
└── build.pySKILL.md starts with front matter, then the instructions in Markdown:
---
name: weekly-report
description: Turn the week's notes into a one-page report for the team.
---
# Steps
1. Read the notes in ~/workspace/notes from the last 7 days.
2. Fill in template.md: wins, problems, next week.
3. Keep it under one page.| Field or rule | Requirement |
|---|---|
name | Lowercase letters, digits, - and _, starting with a letter or digit, up to 63 characters. |
description | One line. Bots read it to decide when the skill applies, so say when to use it. |
| Extra files | Up to 60 files, 1 MB each and 5 MB in total. |
| Scripts | Run only on a bot's computer, never on the server. |
Create a skill
- Go to Settings → Skills and select New skill.
- Fill in Name (lowercase, dashes), One-line description and Instructions (Markdown).
- Select Save.
Skills made here belong to the whole workspace. Use the switch next to a skill to turn it off for every bot without deleting it. To change or remove a skill, select it, then Save or Delete skill.
You can also teach a bot a skill by doing the task once while it watches. See Teach by showing.
Install from the catalog
Casama ships a small catalog of ready-made skills: meeting-notes, weekly-report, research-brief, csv-cleanup (with a cleaning script), code-review and trip-planner.
- Go to Settings → Skills and select Skill catalog.
- Search, or filter by category.
- Under Install for, choose The whole workspace or one bot, then select Install.
Workspace owners and admins can install for the whole workspace. People who manage a bot can install for that bot.
Import from GitHub
- Go to Settings → Skills and select Import from GitHub.
- Paste a link to a folder that contains a
SKILL.md, then select Preview. - Review
SKILL.mdand every file in the folder. Binary files are marked as such. - Under Install for, choose The whole workspace or one bot, then select Install.
Casama installs exactly the commit you previewed, so a change pushed after your review never sneaks in. The skill is labeled with its repository.
Private repositories need a workspace secret named GITHUB_TOKEN that is allowed for api.github.com. See Apps and connections.
Update a GitHub skill
- In Settings → Skills, select Check for updates on the skill.
- If there's a newer commit, review the line-by-line changes to
SKILL.mdand the files Added, Changed and Removed. - Select Update. Otherwise you see Already up to date.
Skills bots write
A bot can save a skill for itself, for example after you walk it through a task, and improve the skills it saved. Skills a bot saves belong to that bot and show Saved by a bot.
- A bot can change only its own skills. Workspace skills are for admins to change.
- Saving or changing a skill is a medium-risk action. When it needs your approval (see Autonomy and approvals), the approval card shows the whole
SKILL.mdfor a new skill, or a line-by-line diff for a change.
Skill ideas from a bot's own work
Bots also learn from how their runs go and suggest skills for you to approve.
- A new skill. When a bot succeeds at a task using at least two tools and no skill, and it has done similar tasks successfully at least twice before, it writes up a skill from up to four of those runs: a name, a description, the steps and the tools it used. It suggests each idea once.
- A better skill. When a run that used a skill fails, or you correct the bot in your next message ("no…", "actually…", "that's wrong"), the bot rewrites the skill and says what changed.
To review ideas:
- You get a notification. Open Inbox → For you. Ideas are under Skill ideas, for example "Ada suggests a skill: weekly-report" or "Ada suggests improving weekly-report".
- Read the steps, the tools it Uses, or the line-by-line change.
- Select Save skill or Apply change, or Dismiss.
Ideas wait for the bot's owner. To apply them without asking, add an action rule that allows the bot's skills.create or skills.update. See Autonomy and approvals.
Plugin skills are never changed this way.
See how a skill is doing
In Settings → Skills, select How it's doing on a skill to see how many times it was used, how often it went well, failures, corrections, the last problem, and Earlier versions. Every change to a skill, by a person or a bot, keeps the old text.
Skills as files
Every skill (and routine) can be exported as Markdown files, edited anywhere and imported back, or kept in sync with a GitHub repository. See Workspace files.
Limits
- Skill ideas appear in For you and as a notification, not as a card in the chat.
- Learning counts only runs since the feature arrived on your server; older history doesn't count.
- Runs in group chats don't lead to skill ideas.
- Without an OpenAI API key for embeddings, similar runs are matched by shared words only.
- Skills from plugins are managed with the plugin. See Plugins.