Creating Custom Skills

Bot is designed to be easily extensible. "Skills" are the primary way to add new capabilities to your assistant.

What is a Skill?

A skill is a directory containing a SKILL.md file (which provides instructions and tool definitions to the LLM) and optionally some scripts or resources.

Step-by-Step: Your First Skill

Create the Directory

Skills live in your workspace, usually ~/bot/skills/. Create a new folder for your skill:

mkdir -p ~/bot/skills/hello-world

Define the `SKILL.md`

Create a SKILL.md file in that directory. This file uses YAML frontmatter for metadata and Markdown for instructions.

---
name: hello_world
description: A simple skill that says hello.
---

# Hello World Skill
When the user asks for a greeting, use the `echo` tool to say "Hello from your custom skill!".

Add Tools (Optional)

You can define custom tools in the frontmatter or instruct the agent to use existing system tools (like bash or browser).

Refresh Bot

Ask your agent to "refresh skills" or restart the gateway. Bot will discover the new directory and index the SKILL.md.

Best Practices

Be Concise: Instruct the model on what to do, not how to be an AI.
Safety First: If your skill uses bash, ensure the prompts don't allow arbitrary command injection from untrusted user input.
Test Locally: Use bot agent --message "use my new skill" to test.

Shared Skills

You can also browse and contribute skills to Hanzo Bot Skills.

Creating Custom Skills

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