Skills

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What is a skill

A skill is a reusable analysis method. At its core it’s a set of instructions for the agent — telling it how to analyze a certain kind of problem. Attach a skill to an agent, and the agent follows that method when it analyzes.

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Why you need skills

Given the same data, the analysis method determines how deep the conclusion goes. Skills capture an expert’s approach — such as “how to flag an anomaly” or “how to attribute a change” — defined once and reused across agents, without re-explaining it in every conversation.

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Built-in skills

AskTable ships with 11 general-purpose analysis skills, ready to use. Their names appear in Chinese in the product:

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Custom skills

Besides the built-in skills, you can create your own. A skill has three parts:

• Name — the skill’s name, e.g., “Store inspection checklist”
• Description — a one-line summary of what it does
• Content — the actual instructions (prompt) for the agent: the steps, definitions, and output format of the analysis

Built-in skills are read-only; custom skills can be edited or deleted anytime.

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How a skill takes effect

A skill isn’t a program that runs on its own — it’s injected into the agent’s system prompt. When you talk to an agent that has skills attached, all of their content is handed to the agent as background instructions, and it picks the right method for the analysis. The better the skills fit the scenario, the more expert the answers.

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Frequently asked questions

Q: Can an agent have multiple skills? A: Yes. Templates usually come with 3-6 skills, and you can add or remove them as needed. Q: Does a skill run queries by itself? A: No. A skill only provides guidance on method. The actual querying and charting is done by the agent’s capabilities (SQL, Python, charts). Q: Can I edit a built-in skill? A: Built-in skills are read-only. To customize, create a new custom skill.