Add skills to an agent

Skills live in your skill library until you hand them to an agent. Each agent gets only the skills you switch on for it, so a bookkeeping agent can carry the invoice skills while your support agent carries the reply-tone skill.

Before you start#

• At least one skill in your library. Write one or add a starter skill on the Skills page. If the library is empty, the agent's Skills panel offers a Create a skill button that takes you there.
• A Hermes agent that has finished setting up. Skills can be imported into Hermes agents today; on other runtimes the Skills panel does not appear. The Brain section unlocks once setup finishes.

Switch skills on#

1. Open the agent and click Settings, then Brain.
2. Scroll down to Skills. Every skill in your library is a card, showing its name and its "when to use it" line.
3. Click a card to switch it on (1). Click it again to switch it off. The badge counts how many are on, for example "1 of 2 on".
4. Click Save skills (2).

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The bar at the bottom says Unsaved changes. until you save, then Saved. The agent picks up the change on its next message.

How the agent uses a skill#

When you save, Qoren writes each skill you switched on into the agent's own skills folder, as a SKILL.md plus any files the skill bundles. Skills you switched off are removed from that folder.

The agent always knows which skills it has and when each one applies, from their "when to use it" lines. When a task matches, it opens that skill's full instructions and follows them, and opens a bundled file when the instructions call for it. So you do not need to tell the agent to use a skill: describe the task, and it reaches for the right one.

If an agent never seems to use a skill, the "when to use it" line is usually too vague. Edit it in the library to name the situation plainly, then refresh the agent's copy as described below.

Refresh a skill after you edit it#

Editing a skill in the library does not update the agents that already have it. An agent keeps the copy it received until its skills are written again, which happens when:

• you save a change to its skill selection, or
• the agent is repaired or rebuilt (see repair an agent).

To push a new version to one agent without changing anything else:

1. In the agent's Brain settings, switch the skill off and click Save skills.
2. Switch it back on and click Save skills again.

The agent now has the latest version.

Remove a skill from an agent#

Switch the skill's card off and click Save skills. The skill is removed from the agent's folder, and your library copy stays.

Deleting a skill from the library does not remove it from agents straight away either. An agent's copy is cleared the next time you save a change to that agent's skills. To remove a skill everywhere, switch it off on each agent and save, then delete it from the library.