Skills

What are Skills?

Skills give AIDA specialized behaviors that switch on automatically when they're relevant. Each skill has a set of trigger words — when your message matches one, AIDA applies that skill's instructions to its response, without you having to ask for it by name.

Think of skills as instincts you teach AIDA. You might have a skill that drafts polished replies whenever you mention email, one that formats meeting notes whenever you mention minutes or transcript, and one that writes social posts whenever you mention LinkedIn. The right skill fires on the right cue.

How Skills Work

Every skill has four parts:

• Name — what the skill is called (e.g. "Email Drafter")
• Description — a short line explaining what it does
• Triggers — the words or phrases that activate it (e.g. email, reply, follow up)
• Instructions — the guidance AIDA follows when the skill is active

When you send a message, AIDA checks it against the triggers of all your active skills. If a trigger matches, that skill's instructions are added to AIDA's context for that response — shaping its tone, focus, and output automatically. You don't switch skills on manually; they fire on their cues.

Each skill can be Active or Disabled. Only active skills can trigger.

Creating a Skill

Via Chat (easiest)

Just describe what you want, and AIDA builds the skill for you:

• "Create a skill called Review Responder that drafts warm, professional replies to customer reviews. Trigger it on: review, reviews, feedback, rating."
• "Make a skill that turns rough notes into clean meeting minutes, triggered on: notes, minutes, transcript, recap."

Via the Skills Page

1. Click Skills in the sidebar
2. Click + New Skill
3. Fill in the details:
   • Name — a short descriptive name (e.g. "Email Drafter")
   • Description — one line explaining what this skill does
   • Triggers — the words that should activate it, comma-separated
   • Instructions — the detailed guidance that defines the skill's behavior
4. Save the skill — it's active right away

Writing Good Skills

Pick clear, specific triggers. Choose words you'd naturally use when you want this behavior — and avoid words so common they'd fire the skill all the time. "invoice, billing, payment" is good; "the, do, get" would trigger constantly.

Keep instructions focused. Tell AIDA the role to play, the tone to use, any rules to follow, and what the output should look like.

Example — Email Drafter

• Triggers: email, reply, follow up, draft
• Instructions:
  ``
You are a professional business email writer.
Write emails that are concise, clear, and professional.
Keep them under 200 words unless more detail is needed.
Always open with a proper greeting and end with a professional sign-off.
``

Example — Meeting Notes

• Triggers: notes, minutes, transcript, recap
• Instructions:
  ```
  When given meeting notes or a transcript, produce a clean summary with:
  1. Key decisions
  2. Action items, with owners and due dates
  3. Topics discussed
  4. Next steps
     ```

Managing Skills

Enable / Disable

Toggle any skill Active or Disabled from its card. A disabled skill stays saved but won't trigger — handy for pausing a behavior without deleting it.

Edit a Skill

Click the Edit (pencil) icon on a skill card to update its name, description, triggers, or instructions.

Delete a Skill

Click the Delete (trash) icon to permanently remove a skill.

Personal vs Global Skills

• Personal skills — created by you, active only for your account
• Global skills — created by an admin, available to all users on the AIDA instance

Tips

Start simple, then refine. Begin with a short instruction and a few clear triggers, test it on a real message, and adjust based on what comes back.

Watch for over-triggering. If a skill fires when you don't want it to, tighten its triggers to more specific words.

Be specific for better results. A "Customer Support Email Writer for a med spa" will outperform a generic "Email Writer" — the more focused the skill, the better the output.

Skills vs Plugins — a skill shapes how AIDA writes or thinks (instructions). A plugin is a small tool that does a computation and returns a result. Use a skill for tone and judgement; use a plugin for structured processing. See Available Tools for plugins.