How to Apply Skills to a Session

Estimated time: 3 minutes
Difficulty: Beginner

Why you'd use this

A skill is a reusable guide that teaches the assistant how to do one kind of work well, for example building n8n automations or writing Moodle plugins, in the Agent Skills layout of a folder with a SKILL.md. When you apply a skill it is included with every request for the session, so you get consistent, house-style results without pasting instructions each time. The extension ships with a library of more than ninety skills, and you can add your team's own.

Before you start

Permissions required:

• None for built-in skills. Write access to .project-ai/skills/ to add workspace skills.

You'll need:

• For your own skills: a folder <name>/SKILL.md with YAML front matter (name and description) followed by markdown instructions, or a single <name>.md file.

Steps

1. Type /skills in the composer, or press / and choose Skills (apply / remove).
2. A pick list opens with a checkbox per skill and its description. Tick the ones to enable and press Enter. Untick to remove.
3. A skills bar appears under the header listing the active skills, with a Manage link to reopen the list.
4. Ask for work in that domain. When a reply draws on a skill, a "Skill applied" chip appears on it.
5. To add a team skill, create .project-ai/skills/<name>/SKILL.md in the workspace, or point the ellmCode.skillsPath setting at a shared folder (absolute or workspace-relative). Workspace skills override a shared-library skill of the same name, which overrides a built-in.
6. In Plan Mode, watch for a "Suggested skills for this project" box after the first planning turn. Tick the suggestions and click Enable selected, or Skip.

What you should see

Active skills are remembered per workspace and are listed in the audit log for every request they were sent with, which is how you confirm a skill was in effect for a given change.

Troubleshooting

• A new skill file is not listed: check the front matter has a name line and the folder sits directly under the skills path. Reopen the picker after saving.
• Replies got slower with many skills on: each skill adds to every request. Keep two or three active for the task at hand and remove the rest.

Related guides

• How to Run a Specialist Agent
• How to Plan and Build a Feature with Plan Mode
• How to Show the Audit Log and Debug Trace