Using and writing skills
A skill is a page of plain text that says how a recurring job should be done — the steps, the checks, the shape the output should take — with one line at the top saying when it applies. The same skill can run in three places, and each does what it is good at.
Where skills run
| Where | How to call it | What comes back |
|---|---|---|
| Chat | Type / and the name, or let it be matched from its "when to use" line | An answer that can take several turns, read your documents and search |
| Canvas | Right-click a card → Apply skill… | Branches in the shape the method calls for |
| Editor | Select text and pick the skill from the AI menu | The result back in the document as a tracked change |
A skill that needs several turns, or needs to search or read files, cannot run on the canvas or in the editor — those generate once and have no tools — and is greyed out there with the reason.
Using what is already there
You do not have to write any. The canvas comes with built-in skills in six groups — diverge, dig
deeper, critique, structure, converge and learn — most of them named methods such as SCAMPER, six
thinking hats or first principles. Chat and the editor have their own. Type / to see them.
Settings → Skills shows each surface. There you can:
- Hide a built-in you never use, so it leaves the menus.
- Copy as mine to get an editable version. Delete your copy and the built-in comes back.
- Add skills from the Example library — a pre-mortem, Porter's five forces, a stakeholder map and more. They only count once added.
Writing one with /new-skill
- Notice the repeat. The third time you explain the same thing — "decisions first, each with an owner and a date" — that sentence is the skill.
- Type
/new-skillin the assistant and describe it the way you would to a new colleague. Expect a question or two back. - Read the draft properly. It shows the whole skill, including the "when to use" line that decides when it gets picked. Nothing is saved until you press save, and overwriting an existing skill asks a second time.
- Choose where it applies — chat, canvas, editor — and whether it is for this knowledge base only or global.
- Use it, then fix the line that let you down. Dates went missing? Open the file and change that one line.
A skill is a file
A skill is a Markdown file — a SKILL.md with a name and a description at the top and the
method below. Putting it in a skills folder is the install; moving it out uninstalls it. Until a
skill is used, the AI sees only its name and its one line, so a full shelf does not slow
anything down.
- Share — export it from Settings → Skills and send the file.
- Import — the whole text is shown before anything is saved. Read it, the way you would read a script before running it.
- From other agent tools — a
SKILL.mdwritten for another tool drops in as a chat skill. Only its text is read; scripts or other files in its folder are not run, and steps that rely on tools MindMax does not have will not happen.
Writing a good one
- Write the "when to use" line as a situation, not a summary of the contents. In chat, only thirty descriptions are offered for automatic matching at once, so overlapping ones make the right skill harder to pick.
- Retire the ones you never use.
- Skills are instructions, not new abilities. A skill changes how the AI approaches a job with what it can already do. It cannot add a capability.