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Use skills

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Use the Skills page in Aperture Chat to collect the skills you want to work with. Your skills holds skills you add from your organization's skills library, skills you create or import, and built-in skills from Aperture. The skills in Your skills are available in Chat. Your personal skills and the library skills you add are also available in agents connected to Aperture over MCP.

To manage your organization's skills library as an administrator, refer to Manage skills.

Prerequisites

To use skills, you need the following prerequisites:

  • A user account that can sign in to Aperture Chat.
  • To add skills your organization shares: a grant from your Aperture administrator that makes those skills visible to you.
  • To create, upload, import, edit, copy, or turn skills on or off: skill authoring, which is on unless your administrator turns it off.
  • To use skills in an agent: an agent connected to the Aperture MCP endpoint. Refer to Use skills in an agent.

Add skills your organization shares

Your Aperture administrator decides which skills you can discover. You choose which of them to add.

  1. Open Aperture Chat and select Skills in the sidebar.
  2. Select the Discover tab. Skills are grouped by source. Built-in skills appear under Aperture.
  3. Select a skill to inspect its files, or select Add to add it to Your skills.

A New or Updated tag marks skills that changed in the last day. When your administrator updates a skill you added, you get the new version with your next message.

Use a skill in Chat

To use a skill in a message, do one of the following:

  • Type / at the start of a message, then select the skill.
  • Type $ at the start of any word in a message, followed by at least two characters of the skill name, then select the skill.
  • On the Skills page, open the skill and select Use in chat to start a new chat with it. A personal skill must be turned on.

The model can also load a skill on its own when the skill's description matches your request. The conversation shows Using skill while the model reads it.

Some skills, such as Skill Creator, need the Chat sandbox. Turn on the sandbox to use them.

Use skills in an agent

Agents connected to Aperture over MCP receive your personal skills and the library skills in Your skills. Built-in skills are available only in Chat.

  1. In Aperture Chat, select Agents in the sidebar.
  2. Follow the setup guide for your agent. For another agent, select Other, then copy the MCP endpoint and add it to your agent as an MCP server. The endpoint is https://<aperture-hostname>/v1/mcp.

Agents that support skills over MCP list and load your skills directly.

Connected agents can also use the Aperture skill tools to list, inspect, and manage your skills, including uploading new ones. For the tools and the access they need, refer to Skill tools.

Create a skill

You can write a skill yourself or build one with the Skill Creator skill.

To write a skill:

  1. On the Skills page, select Add, then select Create a skill.
  2. Enter the following:
    • Name: A single-line name of up to 128 characters.
    • Description: When to use the skill. The model reads the description to decide whether to load it.
    • Instructions: What the model does when it uses the skill, in Markdown.
  3. Select Create skill. The skill opens in the editor, where you can add files.

To build a skill with Skill Creator:

  1. On the Skills page, select Add, then select Create with Aperture. A new chat opens with a starting message that selects Skill Creator. If Create with Aperture doesn't appear, add Skill Creator from Discover first.
  2. Turn on the Chat sandbox if it's off. Skill Creator needs the sandbox.
  3. Send the message and answer the model's questions about what the skill does and when to use it.
  4. When the model produces a .skill file, select Add skill on the file card.

Upload skills

Upload skills you wrote or brought from another agent, such as Claude or Codex.

  1. On the Skills page, select Add, then select Upload skills.
  2. Drop or choose one or more files. Each skill needs a SKILL.md file. You can upload a SKILL.md file, or a .zip or .skill archive of a skill folder, up to 30 MB.
  3. Select Upload. With several files, the button shows the number of files.

If an archive holds several skills, choose one or select Add all. If you already have a skill with the same name, choose Replace and confirm to save the upload as a new version, or choose Keep both and name the copy.

Import skills from a Git repository or a site that publishes skills.

  1. On the Skills page, select Add, then select Import from a link.
  2. Paste a link to the repository or site, then select Find skills. Link to a folder to import only its skills.
  3. Select the skills to import, then select Review N skills.
  4. Review each skill. Import a skill that includes scripts only if you trust the source.
  5. Select Import N skills.

Skills you import from a public repository can stay in sync with the repository. To turn updates on or off, open the skill, select Imported, then use Automatic updates. To keep the skill as your own copy, select Unlink from repository.

To import from a private GitHub repository, connect GitHub in Connectors first. Aperture doesn't update skills from private repositories automatically. To check for an update, open the skill and select Check for updates next to Imported.

Edit a skill

You can edit the skills you create, upload, or import. Each save creates a new version. Saving any change to a skill imported from a repository makes it your own copy, and it stops receiving updates from the repository.

  1. On the Skills page, open the skill.
  2. Select Edit.
  3. Change the skill's files. Use New file, New folder, or Upload file to add supporting files, and link to them from SKILL.md so the model knows when to read them.
  4. Select Save version.

To return to an earlier version, select Version N next to the skill name, choose a version, then select Restore and confirm. The current version stays in the history. Version N appears once a skill has more than one version.

Aperture keeps up to 20 earlier versions of a skill, for 30 days each. Older versions expire and you can't restore them.

Copy a skill to edit it

You can't edit library skills or built-in skills. To change one, make a copy in Your skills.

  1. On the Skills page, open the skill.
  2. Open the Skill actions menu (…) and select Duplicate.
  3. Enter a Name for the copy, then select Duplicate.

Your copy is a personal skill you can edit. The original stays as it is, and your copy doesn't receive its updates.

Turn a skill on or off

Turn off a personal skill to keep it without using it in conversations or agents.

  • To turn one skill on or off, use the switch next to it on the Skills page or on its page.
  • To change several skills at once, select Select, choose the skills, then select Turn on or Turn off.

Built-in and library skills don't have a switch. Add them from Discover to use them, and remove them from Your skills to stop.

To keep the model from using a personal skill on its own in Chat, open the skill, open Skill actions, select Slash command only, then select Make command. The model then uses the skill only after you select it in a conversation.

Remove or delete a skill

  • Library or built-in skill: Open Skill actions and select Remove from Your skills. You can add it again from Discover.
  • Personal skill: Open Skill actions and select Delete. Deleting a skill deletes its history, and you can't undo it.

To save a copy of any skill first, open Skill actions and select Download. Aperture downloads the skill as a .zip file.

Next steps

Additional information

If your organization turns off personal skills for you, you can still add skills from Discover. You can still open, download, or delete your existing personal skills, but you can't create, import, edit, copy, or turn skills on or off. Your personal skills stop reaching your conversations and agents.