Skills
Package reusable guidance an agent can load when its task calls for it.
A skill is a named, reusable set of instructions an agent loads when its task calls for it, so you do not have to repeat the same guidance in every agent's instructions. Where a tool lets an agent act, a skill shapes how it handles a particular kind of task.
SPARK ships a catalogue of NGT Skills, written by NGT and covering investment operations procedures, controls, regulation, reporting and how to build in SPARK itself. Your workspace can add its own custom skills, written by people or by agents. What the library covers is in The NGT Skills catalogue, and how to choose skills for an agent in Give an agent NGT Skills.
Open the Skills page
Open Skills in Agent Studio: on the Settings tab it sits under Agent Studio, and on the Ecosystem tab you rest the pointer on Studio and pick it. You can also open it from an agent's Skills section with Manage skills.
The page shows every skill an agent can load, as cards. Your workspace's own skills come first, under Custom skills. NGT Skills follow on shelves by label family: Category, Process, Role, Jurisdiction, Asset type and Kind, each label a card with how many skills it holds. The categories are Analytics, Controls, Data, Fund Industry, Mathematics, Oversight, Private Assets, Regulation, Reporting and Spark Ecosystem, each in its own colour, the same colours the Tools page uses. A custom skill counts in its category too. Use the search (Search skills) to filter.
Click a card to open its label. The family's labels run across the top as tabs, each with its count; the label's skills are listed on the left, with Search skills and toggles to narrow them by kind and asset type; and the skill you pick is read in full on the right. The reading pane shows the skill's name, its category and kind, what it is for, its Role, Process, Jurisdiction and Asset type, its Version and Id, and its Instructions, with a Pretty view and a Raw view of the underlying Markdown.
Create a custom skill
- On the Skills page, click New.
- Fill in the New skill dialog (Instructions an agent loads when its task calls for them.):
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Skill name | The name shown in the catalogue. Required, and unique in the workspace. |
| Description | A one-line summary shown in the catalogue. |
| Domain | An optional label used to group the skill. |
| Instructions | The Markdown the agent reads when it loads the skill. Required. |
- Click Create. The new skill opens among your custom skills.
Duplicate and modify an NGT skill
NGT Skills cannot be edited, but you can copy one and change the copy. Open the skill and click Duplicate and modify. The confirmation, Duplicate and modify this skill?, says what happens: A copy is added to your workspace's own skills and opens for you to edit. The original stays as it is. Click Duplicate.
Edit, duplicate or delete a custom skill
Open one of your custom skills. Its reading pane offers:
- Duplicate: makes another custom copy.
- Edit: reopens the dialog, titled Edit skill, then Save.
- The trash icon (Delete skill): removes the skill for good. The confirmation warns that it is also unattached from any agents using it.
Let agents write skills
Agents can create and update your workspace's custom skills with their own tools, for example when you ask Spark to turn a procedure you described into a skill. An agent can change only custom skills, never NGT Skills, and it cannot delete a skill: deleting stays a person's decision on the Skills page. If you ask for a name the workspace already uses, the agent updates that skill or picks another name.
The tools are Spark Create Skill (Creates one of the workspace's own skills, or updates one, for agents to follow.) and Spark Read Skill, listed under Agents on the Tools page.
Attach a skill to an agent
- In Agent Studio, open an agent.
- In the Skills section, click + (Add skills), or Add while it is empty.
- The Select skills dialog (Tick the skills this agent can use.) shows the same shelves and reading pane as the Skills page, with a tick on each skill. Tick the skills this agent can use, then click Apply.
Attached skills appear as chips in the Skills section; use the × on a chip to remove one. Custom and NGT Skills sit in the same list and attach the same way.
Reach for a skill when the same guidance should apply across several agents or threads. Keep one-off instructions in the agent's own Instructions section instead.
Skills that come with tools
Spark's tools are linked to the skills that say how to use them. When you give an agent a tool, it also holds that tool's main skill, so it can read it before it writes, without you attaching it. The agent's own skills always come first in its catalogue.
When an agent wants a skill it was not given
Skills often point to each other. An agent reads its own skills freely, but when it asks for a skill it was not given, the thread pauses on a card, Skills the agent wasn't given, so you choose whether it may. Approving lets it read that skill, and any other, until the turn ends; rejecting tells it to stay with its own skills. Where nobody can answer, such as a workflow's Ask Agent step, an agent reads only its own skills.
How skills show up in a thread
When an agent loads a skill, the answer's steps show it as a line with the skill's name and how long it took. Click the line to open the skill as the agent read it (The skill the agent loaded, as it read it.). In Monitoring, the Tools & skills section counts how often each skill is loaded.