Write Your First Skill in Ten Minutes

The best first skill is the prompt you paste most. Mine was release notes: every time, the same instructions about tone, structure, and what to omit. Ten minutes turns that ritual into a file; here is the worked example.

1. Name the job, not the topic

A skill triggers when a task matches its purpose, so name it like a job: "writing-release-notes", not "docs-stuff". One skill, one job: a skill that tries to cover three jobs matches none of them well.

2. Write the file

A skill is a markdown file with a description and instructions:

---
name: writing-release-notes
description: How we write release notes for idapt releases.
---

When writing release notes:

- Lead with what the user can now do, never with what we changed internally.
- One line per change; group by Feature / Fix / Performance.
- Name exact UI surfaces (the button, the page), never internal codenames.
- Omit anything a user cannot perceive.
- End with upgrade or action steps only when the user must do something.

Notice what it contains: decisions. Not context, not examples of everything, just the rules you would otherwise repeat.

3. Save it to the workspace

Create it from the Skills page. From that moment, any agent in the workspace that takes on a release-notes task discovers the skill and follows it: no attaching, no reminding. Your explicit chat instructions still win when you say otherwise.

4. Test it like a rule, not a vibe

Ask an agent to draft release notes from a changelog and check the output against the file line by line. Where it drifted, tighten the instruction: skills reward the same precision as agent memory, and the two divide cleanly: memory holds an agent's accumulated facts; skills hold the workspace's shared procedures.

Good skills to write next

• Your code review checklist.
• The brand voice rules (content pipelines live on this one).
• The way your team writes commit messages, briefs, or client updates.

Skills are GA for every workspace: the announcement has the model, and the feature page covers curated and installed skills beyond the ones you write.