What are Skills

Skills are the fundamental building blocks that enable AI Colleagues to perform specific tasks and operations. Think of skills as individual capabilities that can be combined and orchestrated within Agent Operating Protocols (AOPs) to create comprehensive business process automation.

Key Characteristics of Skills

Reusable Components: Skills are designed to be modular and reusable across multiple AOPs and AI Colleagues.

Atomic Operations: Each skill performs a specific, well-defined task such as:

• Parsing documents
• Analysing data
• Making API calls to 3rd party applications
• Sending notifications
• Performing calculations

Input/Output Defined: Every skill has clearly defined inputs (parameters) and outputs (results), making them predictable and reliable components for process automation.

How Skills Work in the AI Colleagues Ecosystem

Skills registered within the AI Colleagues studio serve below purposes:

1. AOP Integration: Skills can be directly utilised within AOPs as individual steps in business process workflows
2. Master Orchestrator Access: The master orchestrator can also leverage these skills for general query resolution and task execution
3. Identifying the User: User identity is never determined by the AI Agent itself. System integrations are exposed to the AI Agent as skills configured through our Workflow Builder. When an action is triggered (such as a password reset), the user parameter is taken directly from the authenticated session of the logged-in user - not inferred, passed, or determined by the AI model. This means:
   • The AI Agent cannot specify, modify, or override which user an action applies to
   • User context is injected at the platform level, outside the AI's control
   • There is no pathway for the AI to substitute one user's identity for another

Types of Skills

The AI Colleagues platform supports three distinct types of skills, each serving different automation needs:

1. Default Skills

Default skills are pre-built capabilities that come out-of-the-box with the AI Colleagues platform. These skills are ready to use immediately and cover common business automation needs.

2. Custom Skills

Custom skills are organization-specific capabilities created within the Workflows Studio and imported into the AI Colleagues Skills registry. These skills extend the platform's capabilities to meet unique business requirements.