How skills work in CRHQ — giving agents specific capabilities through instructions, API references, and scripts.
Skills are the capability layer of CRHQ. They give agents specific abilities — from browsing the web and querying databases to managing Slack channels and generating reports.
A skill is a package of instructions that tells an agent how to do something. When a skill is assigned to an agent, the agent can read those instructions and follow them during a session.
Each skill contains:
When you talk to an agent, it automatically knows which skills it has and can use them as needed. You don't need to explicitly invoke a skill — the agent determines when a skill is relevant based on your request.
Navigate to Settings → Skills to see all installed skills. From here you can:
Skills are organized by what they do. Common categories include:
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Communication | Slack, email, notifications |
| Data | Database queries, spreadsheets, analytics |
| Development | Code review, deployment, testing |
| Integrations | Google Workspace, APIs, webhooks |
| Content | Writing, editing, publishing |
| System | Memory, file management, scheduling |
System skills come from CRHQ Hub and are maintained centrally. They receive updates automatically and cover common capabilities. You can view their content but can't modify them directly.
Custom skills are skills you create for your specific needs. They're fully under your control and can reference your own APIs, internal tools, or proprietary workflows.
Every skill change is versioned automatically. When a skill is updated — whether from a hub sync or a manual edit — a new version is created. You can:
Tip: Version history is especially useful for custom skills. If an edit breaks something, you can instantly roll back to the last working version.
When an agent receives your message, it has access to all its assigned skills. The process:
Skills can reference other skills, creating powerful composable workflows. For example, a "Weekly Report" skill might reference the "Database Query" skill for data and the "Slack" skill for delivery.
This is a common question:
A skill says "here's how to query a database." A recipe says "every Monday, query the sales database, compare to last week, format a report, and post it to #sales in Slack." Recipes typically reference multiple skills to accomplish a multi-step workflow.