Skills
Skills are modular capabilities that you can activate in any conversation to change how the AI responds. They work by injecting additional instructions into the system prompt, steering the model’s behavior without changing the underlying model.
What are skills?
A skill is a packaged set of system prompt instructions that modify the AI’s behavior for a specific purpose. Unlike agents (which are standalone conversational personas), skills are lightweight augmentations you layer onto any conversation.
Think of skills like modes:
- Concise Mode makes the AI respond with brief, direct answers
- Creative Writer shifts the AI into a more expressive, literary style
- Code Reviewer tells the AI to focus on finding bugs and suggesting improvements
You can activate multiple skills at once, and they combine additively.
Skill types
Tegendo.AI has three tiers of skills, each with different scope and visibility.
System skills
System skills are built into Tegendo.AI and available to every user. They cover common, broadly useful behaviors.
| Skill | Description |
|---|
| Concise Mode | Short, direct answers without unnecessary elaboration |
| Detailed Mode | Thorough, comprehensive responses with examples and context |
| Creative Writer | Expressive, literary tone for creative content |
| Code Reviewer | Focuses on code quality, bugs, performance, and security |
| Security Reviewer | Analyzes inputs through a cybersecurity lens |
| ELI5 | Explains concepts in simple, accessible language |
| Devil’s Advocate | Challenges assumptions and presents counterarguments |
Organization skills
Organization skills are created by admins and shared across your entire organization. They encode company-specific behaviors, standards, and conventions.
Examples:
- A skill that enforces your company’s writing style guide
- A skill that references your internal terminology glossary
- A skill that follows your team’s code review checklist
Organization skills are managed in the admin dashboard under Settings > Skills. Only users with the Admin or Skill Manager role can create or edit organization skills.
Personal skills
Personal skills are created by individual users for their own use. They are not visible to anyone else in the organization.
Examples:
- A skill that formats outputs the way you prefer
- A skill that reminds the AI of your project context
- A skill for a specific writing voice you use in emails
Activating skills
- Click the + button on the left side of the input bar
- Select Skills from the menu
- Browse or search available skills
- Click a skill to toggle it on or off
- Active skills are shown as badges above the input bar
Active skill indicators
When skills are active, small badges appear above the input bar showing each active skill’s name. Click a badge to deactivate the skill. Skills remain active for the duration of the conversation unless you manually deactivate them.
Combining skills
You can activate multiple skills simultaneously. Their instructions are combined in the system prompt in the order they were activated. If two skills have conflicting instructions (e.g., Concise Mode and Detailed Mode), the most recently activated skill takes precedence.
Activating too many skills at once can reduce response quality. The combined instructions may confuse the model or consume too much of the context window. We recommend activating no more than 3 skills at a time.
Creating personal skills
Any user can create personal skills from the Skills panel.
Steps to create a skill
- Open the + menu and select Skills
- Click Create Skill at the bottom of the panel
- Fill in the skill form:
| Field | Description |
|---|
| Name | A short, descriptive name (e.g., “My Code Style”) |
| Description | One sentence explaining what the skill does |
| Instructions | The system prompt text that will be injected when the skill is active |
- Click Save to create the skill
Writing skill instructions
Skill instructions should be clear, specific, and focused on a single behavior. They are injected verbatim into the system prompt, so write them as if you are directly instructing the AI.
Good example:
Always format code examples using TypeScript with strict types.
Include JSDoc comments on all exported functions.
Prefer functional patterns over class-based patterns.
Be a good coder and write nice code.
Editing and deleting skills
Open the Skills panel, find your skill, and click the three-dot menu to edit or delete it. Deleting a skill removes it immediately and deactivates it from any conversations where it was active.
How skills affect the system prompt
When skills are activated, their instructions are appended to the conversation’s system prompt in a structured block:
[Base system prompt]
---
Active Skills:
- Concise Mode: Respond with brief, direct answers. Avoid unnecessary elaboration, hedging, or filler. Use bullet points for lists. Keep responses under 150 words unless the question requires detailed explanation.
- Code Reviewer: Focus on code quality. Identify bugs, performance issues, security vulnerabilities, and style violations. Reference best practices and suggest specific improvements with code examples.
---
[User messages...]
Skill precedence
When multiple instruction sources are active, they are applied in this order (later sources can override earlier ones):
- Organization default prompt — Set by admins in organization settings
- Project instructions — If the conversation is within a project
- Agent system prompt — If the conversation is with an agent
- Skills — In activation order (most recent last)
- User message — The user’s actual input
This layering means skills can override project or agent instructions if they conflict, which is intentional — skills are user-controlled refinements.
