How to configure Smart Skills

Smart Skills are your organization’s saved, repeatable AI prompts. A task your team runs often, like drafting an executive summary or scanning a proposal for red flag language, is written once as a prompt, refined, and saved, so everyone runs the proven version instead of writing their own.

That consistency is the point: the same prompt, the same sources, and the same behavior every time, whoever runs it. And with QPilot Agents, your Smart Skills go further. A skill can run with an agent selected, and the Skills agent can find and run the right skill from a plain-language request.

This article is for the Designer and Admin users who create and manage Smart Skills.

In this article we will cover:

1. Where to find Smart Skills
2. Creating a Smart Skill
3. Customize Smart Skills
4. Smart Skill Permissions
5. Smart Skills and QPilot Agents
6. Writing Smart Skill Prompts

Where to find Smart Skills

Users in the Designer or Admin role can create Smart Skills.

To create a Smart Skill, log into QorusDocs on the web, then go to ‘Manage’ and select ‘Smart Skills’. Click on 'Create'.

Creating a Smart Skill

To begin, let’s quickly clarify what all the Smart Skills fields are:

1. Name: This is the name of the skill that users will select. Choose a clear and descriptive name that reflects the function of the skill.
2. Description: Provide a brief description of the skill that will appear to users. This should explain what the skill does and when to use it. With QPilot Agents, the Description does a second job: the Skills agent matches plain-language requests against it to find the right skill to run, and a skill with no Description is never offered by the agent. A crisp, specific Description makes your skill easy to find.
3. Agent: Optionally select the QPilot Agent that runs this Smart Skill. A skill linked to an agent runs with that agent’s capabilities, so a skill linked to the Answer agent searches your content sources, and one linked to the Web Research agent can research the public web. Leave this unselected to run the skill without an agent, as Smart Skills have always worked. The Skills agent can never be a Smart Skill’s agent, since skills cannot run skills, and the Credentials agent is not available here. See The Skills Agent Guide for how agents run Smart Skills.
4. Product Area: Specify the product area where this Smart Skill will be offered. This helps users find and use the skill in the appropriate context within QPilot.
5. Sources: Identify the content source(s) this skill will have knowledge of. Limiting the skill to one source can yield more accurate results, but you can include multiple sources if necessary.
6. Prompt: This is the core of the Smart Skill. Define the prompt and instructions that the Smart Skill will run when used. Ensure the prompt is specific and detailed to achieve the desired outcome. You can use the @ mention feature within a Smart Skill to provide context to QPilot. (25000 character limit)
7. Notes: Add any admin-view notes about this Smart Skill. These notes are for internal use and can include details about the skill’s development, usage tips, or maintenance instructions.
8. AI Model: Choose the AI model for this Smart Skill from the drop-down list. We recommend selecting ‘Default’, the model that QorusDocs manages and keeps current, as manually selecting a model is retiring. See AI Models Supported by QorusDocs QPilot AI Assistant for the supported models, including how temperature applies. Model selection does not affect QPilot Agents: each agent uses its own model, so a Smart Skill that runs with an agent selected is not changed by this setting.

You can also enhance your Smart Skill prompt by using the @ mention feature, which allows you to reference the current document, any highlighted text, or any Recently Used documents. As soon as you type the @ symbol in your prompt, a menu will appear, where you can select the appropriate reference this Smart Skill should use for context. 

Customize Smart Skills

You can also adjust a pre-created Smart Skill on the fly to fit the task at hand. The ‘Customize’ action button on a Smart Skill takes you to the AI Assistant chat with the skill’s prompt and sources prepopulated, where you can edit them for this one interaction. The original skill stays unchanged at the Hub level, so your adjustments never affect what the rest of the team runs.

Let’s take a look at how this works:

Smart Skill Permissions 

Smart Skill permissions let Admins and Designers restrict a skill to specific users or groups. A restricted skill is visible only to the people it is meant for, so each team sees the skills for its own work and nothing it should not use.

Permissions also control which Smart Skills the Skills agent can offer. The agent offers every enabled skill a user is permitted to use, in every Product Area, so when a skill should stay out of reach for some users, restrict it with permissions rather than relying on its Product Area.

Let's take a look at how you can restrict access to your Smart Skills:

1. Click on the gear icon for the Smart Skill you want to configure
2. Select 'Permissions' 

This will bring up the 'Smart Skill Permissions' window:

1. Select 'Custom'
2. Search and select users and/or groups
3. Click on save to apply these changes

Smart Skills and QPilot Agents

With QPilot Agents, the Smart Skills you build become the building blocks of agent work. The Skills agent finds the right Smart Skill from a user’s plain-language request, or chains several skills together, runs them, and writes up the result. See The Skills Agent Guide for the full picture. For Designers, four things matter most:

• The Description is how skills get found. The Skills agent matches requests against each skill’s Description, so a crisp Description makes a skill easy to find, and a skill with no Description is never offered by the agent.
• Permissions are the way to limit a skill, not Product Area. The Skills agent offers every enabled, permitted skill in every Product Area, so a skill built for one app is offered in the others too unless its permissions restrict it.
• Skills cannot run skills. The Skills agent is never available as a Smart Skill’s agent, and a Smart Skill whose selected agent can itself run Smart Skills is not offered by the Skills agent. Link task agents, like the Answer agent, or none.
• Two ways to run a skill. The ‘Run Skill’ button on the Smart Skills tab runs the skill the user has already chosen, directly. The Skills agent picks the skill from the request, and can chain several. Both have a place in your team’s workflow.

Writing Smart Skill Prompts

A Smart Skill prompt is a brief the AI follows the same way every time, so the quality of the skill is the quality of the prompt. On the Default AI model, these are the habits that matter most:

• State the task, the structure, and the length. The Default model follows instructions literally and writes fully, so say exactly what you want: ‘a maximum of 300 words’, ‘bullets only, with no sub-bullets’, ‘plain text with no markdown’. If you do not state a limit, the model chooses its own, and output is usually longer than you expect.
• Say what to do when information is missing. Tell the skill to skip items it cannot answer, or to insert a placeholder such as [INSTRUCTION: add client priorities]. Without this, answers can fill with ‘Not specified’ lines.
• Set the style in the prompt. The prompt carries the style. Lines like ‘be concise and factual’, ‘paraphrase the source text rather than quoting it’, or ‘write in a warm, conversational tone’ shape the tone and precision of every answer the skill gives.
• Give context with @ mentions. Reference the current document, highlighted text, or Recently Used documents in the prompt, so the skill works on the right content every time it runs.
• Write a complete brief when an agent is selected. An agent completes multi-step work from the one prompt, and in Assignments and AI text Smart Fields it cannot ask follow-up questions, so name the documents to use, the output you want, and where to save it in the prompt itself.
• Start from proven prompts. The agent guides linked from Introducing QPilot Agents contain tested, copy-ready prompts. Refine one against your own content, then save it as a Smart Skill so the whole team runs the proven version.

Before you share a new skill, test it on a real document, compare the output against what the prompt asked for, and tighten the prompt wherever the two differ.