Skills
Skills are reusable, project-level instructions that teach Scout how your team works. Think of them as playbooks Scout can follow: your team's naming conventions, your SEO checklist, the steps you take whenever you create a landing page.
You author a skill once. Scout uses it automatically (always or on demand) in every conversation, in every project where the skill is enabled.
Key concepts#
- Skill: a set of instructions for Scout, written in Markdown, with a name and a description.
- Visibility mode: controls whether Scout always loads the skill, or loads it on demand when its description matches the user's request.
- Active / inactive: a per-skill toggle for temporarily disabling a skill without deleting it.
Skills vs AI guidance
Skills and AI guidance are complementary, not alternatives.
- AI guidance describes the standards your AI-generated content should meet, like brand voice, tone, writing style, dos and don'ts, and metadata preferences. Guidance does not affect Scout's response behavior.
- Skills describe the procedures, conventions, and practices your team follows. They are knowledge for Scout's decisions.
Who can manage skills#
Skills are managed by team admins under Settings → Scout AI → Skills.
Non-admin users see the skills Scout applies indirectly, in the way Scout responds, but they don't see the management page.
How Scout uses a skill#
Each skill has one of two visibility modes:
| Mode | What Scout does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Always included | Scout adds the skill's content to every conversation in the project. | Cross-cutting context and guardrails Scout should have on every task: shared business context (company name and purpose, target audiences), business goals, project-wide conventions (product naming or industry specific terms), and how Scout should behave in chat (for example, stay brief or adopt a particular personality). |
| On-demand | Scout reads the skill's description like a router prompt and pulls in the body only when a request matches. | Procedure-style skills that are only relevant in specific situations (for example "Translate a landing page", "Run an SEO audit"). |
Write on-demand descriptions like router prompts
For on-demand skills, Scout only sees the name and description when deciding whether to load the skill — the body stays out of context until the description matches. The description has to carry the trigger on its own.
- Phrase it imperatively:
Use when the user asks to <thing>. - Include phrasings users might actually type, especially ones that don't name the procedure directly ("set up a campaign" alongside "create a landing page").
- The clearer the trigger, the more reliably Scout loads the skill — and the less likely it fires on unrelated requests.
For a deeper walkthrough see Optimizing skill descriptions.
Limits#
- Up to 10 skills per project.
- Up to 10,000 characters per skill, combined across the name, description, and body.
Author a skill#
Open Settings → Scout AI → Skills.
Click Add skill.
Fill in the drawer:
Field Description Name Short, human-friendly name for the skill (shown in the list). Description One-paragraph summary of what the skill is for. Required for on-demand skills, since Scout uses it as the routing signal to decide when to load the skill. Always include this skill Toggle. On = always included; off = on-demand. Active Toggle off to temporarily disable the skill without deleting it. Content The content of the skill that Scout will see when it has been loaded. Click Save.
Authoring tips#
A skill is a prompt your team writes for Scout. The same rules of thumb that make a good prompt make a good skill.
Start from your real work#
The most effective skills come from procedures you've already executed manually. Before writing from scratch, look for:
- Slack threads or tickets where you walked someone through "how we do X here".
- Existing runbooks, style guides, naming conventions, or onboarding docs.
- A conversation with Scout where you had to correct them the same way more than once.
Promote those into a skill. A skill grounded in something your team has actually done will outperform anything written from generic best practices.
Structure your skill#
A consistent shape makes skills easier to read and easier for Scout to act on. A useful default:
Be specific and outcome-focused#
- Tell Scout what success looks like, not just the steps.
- Reference your project's actual components, content types, and patterns by name.
- Where there are existing conventions (slug format, hero copy length, OG image rules), state them.
Provide defaults, not menus#
If there are multiple ways to do something, pick one as the default and only mention alternatives as fallbacks. A skill that says "use the Landing page composition pattern" produces consistent output. A skill that lists three patterns and asks Scout to choose produces three different outputs across three runs.
Calibrate strictness to risk#
Not every step needs the same level of control. Match how prescriptive you are to how fragile each step is:
- Be strict for things that are risky, irreversible, or where the exact output matters — naming conventions, slug formats, required SEO fields, asset dimensions. Use imperative language ("Always set the OG image to 1200×630.").
- Leave room for judgment where multiple approaches are valid — headline phrasing, which supporting components to use, ordering of optional sections. Explain why the goal matters and let Scout adapt.
Most skills mix both. Calibrate each step on its own merits.
Keep them small and composable#
- One skill per procedure. A 10,000-character mega-skill is hard to maintain.
- Cross-reference Uniform docs instead of re-explaining a concept.
Use "Always included" sparingly#
Every always-included skill goes into every conversation, so keep them focused on things Scout genuinely needs every time. Good fits include:
- Shared business context — who you are, who you serve, what the site is for.
- Project-wide conventions or guardrails that apply across all work.
- Behavioral preferences for Scout in chat, such as keeping responses brief or adopting a specific personality.
Default to on-demand for procedure skills so Scout only pulls them in when relevant.
Iterate after you ship#
Skills get better with use. After a skill is live:
- Watch how Scout actually applies it in chat. If they skip steps, the steps are probably ambiguous. If they do the wrong thing in a related-but-different scenario, the description or "When to use" section needs refining.
- For on-demand skills, try 3–4 different phrasings of the same request. If Scout sometimes loads the skill and sometimes doesn't, broaden or sharpen the description until it triggers consistently.
- Every time you have to correct Scout the same way twice, fold the correction into the skill.