Teach it the patterns you repeat.

Teach it once. It keeps it.

A skill is a named recipe — instructions, templates and examples written in plain language — that your agents reach for when the task fits. Each skill has a trigger (when it activates — something you say, or something the agent notices in its own work), a process (what it does, step by step), and an output shape (what it produces). All written in English, not code.

Skills live in a shared library. You grant specific skills to specific agents — there is no switch to flip; a skill is live for exactly the agents that hold it. Editing a skill once updates it for every agent that uses it. If an agent needs a specialised version, ask for a copy of it and tailor that.

The same way you build everything else in 1Presence — through conversation. You describe the pattern in your own words. 1Presence shapes it into something precise:

• You: "Whenever I say 'prep me', check my next meeting, pull context from my vault, write a one-page brief."
• Presence: "Got it. I'll trigger on 'prep me' or 'brief me for X'. I'll pull the next event from your primary calendar, search vault Projects/ and People/ for context, and produce a brief under Daily/Prep/ with sections: Attendees, Context, Goals, Where we left it. Want me to also scan email threads with the attendees?"
• You: "Yes, the last couple of weeks."
• Presence: "Saved. The skill is live."

The result is a precisely-worded skill that triggers reliably, structures its output, and can be improved over time by saying things like "actually, also include a draft opener I could use." It also gets a handle — type /prep-me in any conversation to run it directly — and a link of its own, so an agent that has just built one can point you straight at it.

The interesting thing about skills is that they accumulate — each one saving you a few minutes of explanation, each producing a consistent output, each editable in plain language. Skills become a small private operating system for the way you work.

And because skills live in a shared library rather than buried in code, they are yours: written in plain language, browsable on each skill's own page, editable any time, and portable between your agents. Open a skill to see exactly what it does, which agents use it, and when it last ran. The library need not start empty, either: a Kit arrives with its skills already written and granted to its keeper.

Skills are the building blocks of agents and workflows. An agent is essentially an identity, a set of skills, and the connectors it can reach. A workflow is a sequence of stages, each one run by an agent drawing on its skills. Once you have built up your skill library, composing new workflows becomes a matter of arrangement, not invention.