Skills and slash commands
Write a skill once and run it as a /command — on one channel for everyone, just for you, or built into an agent — and see which skill wins a name.
A skill is a reusable procedure written as one SKILL.md document. Save it on a channel, keep it for yourself, or give it to an agent, then run it by typing its name as a /command.
Skills are how you stop re-explaining the same work. Write down your launch checklist, your review steps or your brand voice once, and everyone who runs the command gets the same steps, the same checks, and the same idea of what finished looks like.
Three places a skill can live
Where you save a skill decides who can run it and where it works.
| Channel skill | Personal skill | An agent's own skill | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manage it in | Channel settings → Skills | Settings → Account → Skills | Agent window → Brain → Skills |
| Who can run it | Everyone in the channel | Only you | Anyone talking to that agent |
| Where it works | That channel and its tasks | Every channel you're in | Wherever the agent works |
The channel's shared conventions. In q4-launch, a /launch-brief skill means the same thing for Maya, Leo and Priya. A channel's skills show up only in that channel's chat and in tasks started from it, so they never leak into unrelated work.
Your own /commands. Only you see them, and they follow you into every channel. Use them for the way you like work done, not the way a team agreed to do it.
Part of what makes a specialist good at its job. Open the agent's window, go to Brain, and open any skill under Skills to read or edit its full SKILL.md. External agents run on their own runtime's instructions, so they don't read skills saved here.
Create a skill
Open the channel's settings and choose Skills, or go to Settings → Account → Skills for a personal one.
Choose New skill. The editor opens with a starter document.
Set the name in the frontmatter — lowercase words joined by hyphens. It becomes the /command.
Write one sentence in description saying when the skill applies, then the procedure below it: the steps, the checks, and what a finished result looks like.
Choose Save. The skill is ready to run straight away.
A finished channel skill might look like this:
---
name: launch-brief
description: Turn a feature spec into a one-page launch brief for q4-launch.
---
1. Read the linked spec and pull out the problem, the audience and the ship date.
2. Draft a headline and three benefit bullets in our brand voice.
3. List open questions for Maya before anything goes to Launch Copywriter.
Done means one page, no jargon, and every claim traceable to the spec.Editing a skill later bumps its version, which shows next to its name in the list.
Which skill runs when names clash
The same name can mean different things in different places. When more than one skill shares a name, the most specific one wins.
| Order | Skill | Why it wins |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The channel's skill | It's the channel's convention, so it wins inside that channel |
| 2 | The agent's own skill | It's what the name means when you're talking to that agent |
| 3 | Your personal skill | It's your own version, used wherever a channel or agent doesn't define that name |
| 4 | A shared workspace skill | The fallback when nothing closer exists |
A shared workspace skill only ever runs as that fallback, when no channel, agent or personal skill uses the name.
Say Maya keeps a personal /launch-brief, and q4-launch has its own. In q4-launch, everyone — Maya included — gets the channel's version. In every other channel, Maya gets hers.
Install a skill from a link
Found a skill someone published? Ask Nebula to install it from a direct link to its SKILL.md. Nebula fetches it, runs a safety scan, and installs it on the agent you name. If the scan flags a problem, nothing is installed and Nebula tells you why.
Install the launch checklist skill from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/northwind/playbooks/main/launch-checklist/SKILL.md onto @Launch Copywriter.
Fetching the SKILL.md and scanning it before installing on @Launch Copywriter.
Installed. launch-checklist now shows in @Launch Copywriter's Brain under Skills.
FAQ
Unsure which skills an agent has? Ask Nebula to list them. For anything else, email support@nebula.gg.
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