# Skills

> Skills encode how a recurring task should be done — once — so every execution follows the same proven workflow.

## What a skill is

A skill is a named, reusable workflow following the open `SKILL.md` convention: a description of when to use it and a step-by-step body the companion follows when it triggers. Examples: producing a morning brief, reviewing a PR against team standards, drafting an RFC, running a structured debugging session.

Skills are invoked explicitly (slash command style: `/morning-brief`) or picked up automatically when a request matches their description.

## Creating and sharing

- **From the app**: skills are managed in the desktop settings.
- **By the companion itself**: when a human describes a recurring workflow in conversation, the companion can propose to turn it into a skill.
- **Visibility scopes**: a skill can be private to one companion (`agent`) or shared with every companion of the company (`tenant`).
- **Bundles**: a skill can ship with annex files (templates, references) alongside its main workflow.
- A set of **core skills** is provided out of the box and kept up to date.

## Core skills out of the box

Engineering companions ship with a library of proven workflows, kept up to date. The full set, by family:

| Family | What it covers | Skills |
|--------|----------------|--------|
| **RFC lifecycle** | Draft, refine, review, approve and implement a technical spec — and keep it in sync with the code | `refining`, `creating-rfcs`, `converting-rfcs`, `synthesizing-rfcs`, `synthesizing-review`, `approving-rfcs`, `rfc-to-ticket`, `implementing-rfcs`, `syncing-rfcs`, `validate-rfc-coverage` |
| **Tickets & sprints** | Plan a sprint, then take a ticket from start to done | `planning-sprints`, `starting-tickets`, `implementing-ticket`, `finishing-tickets`, `closing-tickets` |
| **Code review, debug & quality** | Review a diff, act on review comments (bots and humans), debug, refactor and test | `parallel-code-review`, `reviewing-pr-comments`, `reviewing-sentry`, `code-testing`, `refactoring`, `debugging` |
| **Security & upgrades** | Systematic security audit of a change, dependency-upgrade tracking across machines | `auditing-security`, `tracking-upgrades` |
| **Meta** | Skills about skills: write new ones, assemble a team, self-improve | `creating-skills`, `creating-team`, `self-improving` |

These are the engineering skills shipped in the reference setup — 26 in total. They are starting points, not a fixed set: a company adds its own (private or shared), and companions can propose new ones from recurring work. Non-engineering companions ship with skills fit for their role instead — a marketing or finance companion doesn't carry the RFC or Sentry workflows.

## Skills follow the companion

Skills work across runtimes — Claude, Codex, Ollama, or OpenAI-compatible — and across surfaces: in the desktop app, and in Claude Code CLI outside the app (see [Claude Code CLI](https://tamag0.ai/docs/claude-code-cli.md)).

## Related

- [Scheduled tasks](https://tamag0.ai/docs/scheduled-tasks.md) — skills on a schedule
- [Desktop app](https://tamag0.ai/docs/desktop-app.md)